106 ms·
Permanent suspension of @realDonaldTrump
- postalrat 6y agoWhen /r/the_donald got booted off reddit they got together and created https://thedonald.win/ https://thedonald.win/. All this action from twitter will do is create an opportunity for a different or new site to host trump's comments. And for many people, and maybe someday the majority of people, that new site may be more trustworthy than twitter.
- simlevesque 6y agoDo you think they are not aware of that ? I think that they know and they think it's insignificant.
- runarberg 6y agoGood. Kick him of off the more popular platform and let him rot in the dirty corners of the internet. He and his followers can spew their racism all they want in some dirty unmoderated space where I and my friends don’t have to suffer for it. If they then use that platform to plan something dangerous and illegal, a competent law enforcement should be able to stop it and arrest them on grounds of conspiracy or hate speech.
- annexrichmond 6y agoHow did the existence of his account on Twitter lead you and your friends to suffer? Can't you just block that account? > If they then use that platform to plan something dangerous and illegal, a competent law enforcement should be able to stop it and arrest them on grounds of conspiracy or hate speech. The same could be said if the account remained on Twitter. In fact, one could argue that's better platform for law enforcement to take action.
- runarberg 6y agoThe harm is in exposing this toxic and racist rhetoric to my friends and family. This can be a) insulting and b) incite people we’re close to repeat and extend on this rhetoric. The further he is from the popular platform the less likely it is to happen to those close to me. The popular platforms are full of dog whistles and memeified hate speech as people moderate them self in order to make the content more palatable for the general public and prevent being kicked of the platform. In an unmoderated dark corner of the internet that is not necessary. So arguable twitter is a terrible place for law enforcement to hunt down racists and prevent their terrorism.
- postalrat 6y agoThis is how news networks like fox news become #1.
- lumpenprole 6y agoYes, the best way to build trust is to act as a megaphone for Donald Trump.
- dageshi 6y agoNope. They will never police themselves to the extent that they had too on reddit. Anyone stumbling into them who wasn't already heavily inclined to their cause will bounce off from the sheer nastiness of the place. Being on reddit forced them to tone down and memeify to the point where they were kinda entertaining in the beginning, that's what drew a lot of people in. thedonald.win will end up like another infowars or 4chan, that weird corner of the internet you visit occasionally to look at the weirdness but mostly avoid.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoHow exactly is TheDonald.win "sheer nasty"? Give some examples. I've perused that site and there's a lot of outrage at how the President has been treated, true, but I don't see much nasty. Then again, free speech can seem ugly, when you're used to a carefully curated kind of controlled speech.
- dageshi 6y agoWell I'd go check but the site seems to be down. Perhaps "nasty" is the wrong word, although I do think there's an element of that. More "delusional"? That is, so divorced from what I perceive as reality that anyone not already on that path is going to be utterly confused by what people there believe, like the other conspiracy-esque sites out there.
- postalrat 6y agoIt's not down. You do have to pass a captcha because all the crazies are targeting the site.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoIt's back, as of 7:31 EST, and no captcha. But it's still very slow. But so is hacker news, at least for me. EDIT: oops, it's down at 7:33. I guess the landing page is up, but clicking on a discussion sends me back to a Cloudflare gateway timeout page.
- tmpz22 6y agoHaving massive followings on fringe sites yields less legitimacy then having a massive following on one of the mainstays of the internet.
- SquareWheel 6y agoDidn't they create that website before they got banned?
- input_sh 6y agoYes, long before. /r/t_d was pretty much dead at the point it was banned and the ban was pretty meaningless. Reddit gave them plenty of warnings that made it easy for them to figure out what was going to happen, since they've decided to ignore those warnings. Not the case with /r/donaldtrump, which was banned a day or two ago.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Sebguer 6y agoIt sounds like he tweeted new things today that they considered breaching their earlier warning? Does anyone know what those tweets were? Edit: Oh, damn, I had just seen the Twitter Safety and just assumed that this was linking to that, not to a separate blogpost. As many people have pointed out it was for these two tweets: On January 8, 2021, President Donald J. Trump tweeted: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” Shortly thereafter, the President tweeted: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
- zwily 6y agoIt quotes them in the article.
- GranPC 6y agoPer the linked article: > The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!! > To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.
- mc32 6y agoOk so he’s dissing the incoming President... ok, that’s rude. But the other preceding text is pretty anodyne. I think it’s clear about controlling the narrative. In the end what this will do is kickstart more of an echochamber on another service, they’ll diverge and we’ll get people in one camp on one platform, the other camp in the other. Except they’ll be more extreme on both sides as moderates tail off.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoOne interpretation is that his supporters should feel confident attacking the inauguration knowing he won’t be there to be injured. They are already openly planning violence: https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/1347609631527489537?s=21 https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/1347609631527489537?...
- thatswrong0 6y agoThey let him concede, waited a day, and then nuked him. It's too little too late, but I'll take it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- StavrosK 6y agoThis was the straw that broke's the camel's back, Trump's influence is waning (since he's not going to be in office any more in a few days), and even his supporters are distancing themselves. I don't think Twitter could have done this earlier without risking lots of blowback.
- dionian 6y agoYou may agree with this new power now when its used on Trump, but you might not agree with it in the future. By then it will have been too late.
- nxc18 6y agoIf I incite a mob to march on the seat of government, commit acts of sedition against The United States, and directly threaten the peaceful transfer of power, and refuse to abide by the terms of service, I deserve _a lot_ more than being banned from my social media site. You have to look at it in context.
- chillwaves 6y agoAny leader inciting insurrection against their own country should be banned. You know what? I don't think anyone I would support has a problem clearing that very low bar. Maybe people should be less concerned that Trump got banned for being a lying, traitorous piece of shit and more concerned that he was ever president in the first place.
- ben_w 6y agoThis power has been used in ways I disagree with since before Trump ran for office. I still prefer a rules-based society to anarchy. However, I also prefer anarchy to oligarchy: People have even specifically demonstrated that Trump was receiving special privileges which prevented him from being banned, and they did so by getting themselves banned for tweeting copies of his tweets.
- bmsleight_ 6y agoWow - all the toys are being take-away. The sulky infant may lash out.
- tonetheman 6y agoFinally ... ding dong the witch is dead. I would like to know how much revenue Twitter and Facebook made off of this POS. Doubtful we will ever hear such things.
- esoterica 6y agoI think the extremely online political junkies vastly overestimate the amount of money Twitter derives from Donald Trump's tweets. Most people just use Twitter to follow their friends and celebrities and don't hang on to his every word. They were mostly refraining from taking a harder line on Trump because they were worried about retaliation from the Republicans. Now that Trump's out office and the Democrats control all three branches that's no longer a concern for them.
- tonetheman 6y agoYou could be totally correct. I would like to know though. I think you think it lower than me and I think it higher than you. Ha. Just good that he is gone.
- ProfessorLayton 6y agoMaybe not directly, but there's no denying that he drives engagement metrics from all sides. Engaging products are stickier, and thus drives product teams intensely to continue doing so. Of course we've seen intense polarization because of this, but all that aside it's easy to see why a company beholden to shareholders would hesitate for so long.
- seattle_spring 6y ago> I would like to know how much revenue Twitter and Facebook made I would assume not that much, unless the ads being shown to his followers were for extended mags, American flags, MAGA hats, or truck nuts.
- xupybd 6y agoI really don't when a private company decides who gets air time and who doesn't. Oh well it's the world we live in.
- agildehaus 6y agoDon't use their platform? If it's disruptive for one private company to kick someone off, then perhaps they shouldn't have that much control over communication?
- epistasis 6y agoYes, it is the world we live in, and have pretty much always lived in. Private companies have been deciding who gets "air time" ever since we had radio or TV. And with the printing press, it's always been private companies deciding who gets airtime.
- TigeriusKirk 6y agoThe appeal of social media is that they no longer had such a heavy hand about it. It's virtually the entire point.
- setpatchaddress 6y agos/social media/the web/
- saladgnu054 6y agoI'm pretty sure public utilities don't get to deny service for political wrongthink, though. And platforms like Android play store and the iPhone app store are definitely that (regarding Parler).
- epistasis 6y agoPolitical wrongthink has nothing to do with this. It's about the incitement to violence, something that even the 1st amendment doesn't protect. They're that way regarding pornography, or even App names that give the hint of promoting drug use (Amphetamine, recently). Pretty much everything that's not acceptable on the 10pm news is kept out of app stores.
- randyrand 6y agoThe message is clear, wrongthink will only be tolerated for 3.9 years.
- anandchat 6y agoViolate the terms, get banned. That's fair.
- macinjosh 6y agoThe rest of us are next.
- lumpenprole 6y agoFirst they came for the narcissistic sociopaths and I said nothing.
- st1x7 6y ago> Who's next? Anyone who violates Twitter's terms and conditions.
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoWhich can be changed by Twitter at any time.
- st1x7 6y agoOf course. It would be weird if a company wasn't able to change its own policy.
- xiaodai 6y agoJoe Biden. Yeah right.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- esoterica 6y agoWhat precedent? That a private company can ban people from posting on their servers. Well, duh.
- copperwater69 6y agoWeird they quote the tweets which are so 'dangerous'
- mkl 6y agoIn isolation they aren't. Immediately following the quoted tweets they explain: "Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks." They then explain exactly what they're thinking about those tweets.
- rufus_foreman 6y ago> In isolation they aren't Hold on there, we're still talking about Twitter, right? A content business that limits the length of a statement on its platform to 280 characters is now arguing that statements on its platform must be read in a broader context? Seriously?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- baggy_trough 6y agoInsane and outrageous.
- prions 6y agoFree speech extremists seriously think a private company should be forced to keep someone who uses their platform to incite deadly riots. Trump's free speech here has consequences. 5 people have died.
- saladgnu054 6y agoYes, those free speech extremists. They are as bad as those pursuit of hapiness extremists or the life and liberty extremists. Where do they think they are to expect to be able to exercise their rights, just think of the children.
- prions 6y agoWhat rights as a US citizen has Trump lost here? The right to shitpost on twitter?
- saladgnu054 6y agoHe was removed from one of the largest public spaces for speech, which is against the spirit of the law, and everyone else was also hindered in hearing his free speech, which is even worse and is also against the spirit of the law.
- arentyouspecial 6y agoThis spirit of the law? No the law says the government can’t infringe on some ones right to free speech. Twitter isn’t the government, it is a private company. Your type can yell till your face is blue about this stupid public square argument but that doesn’t make it true. Do you have the right to go into the biggest restaurant in your town and yell and instigate a riot and then complain about getting kicked out?
- bluedino 6y agoUnfair moderation is not a good precedent.
- gyc 6y agoI mean it's only unfair in that anyone else who has continuously violated twitter's rules would've been banned long ago.
- QuixoticQuibit 6y agoYou can take the mask off and just say you’re a Trump supporter. Anyone else who would’ve tweeted the things he has for the past several years would’ve been banned a long time ago.
- mrsuprawsm 6y ago4 years of fascism and inciting violence is all it took. This is far too little too late and Twitter is clearly complicit.
- eznzt 6y agoConsider yourself lucky that you have absolutely no idea what fascism looks like.
- insert_coin 6y agoAt the beginning? Exactly like this.
- leephillips 6y agoRewind a little more and just about anything is what fascism looks like “at the beginning”.
- valvar 6y agoI wouldn't go so far as to call Twitter Fascist. Authoritarian and repressive, perhaps, but their ideology is pretty different.
- dirtnugget 6y agoI think he called Trump facist
- valvar 6y agoPerhaps my sarcasm was not obvious enough.
- dirtnugget 6y agoI have real trouble spotting non-phonetic sarcasm
- grezql 6y agothis is wrong. I dislike Trump and his 4 years but this is wrong.
- tenebrisalietum 6y agoElaborate. 1A says the government can't make a law abridging speech. It doesn't say Twitter can't refuse to make posts submitted by X available to everyone who accesses their systems via the Internet. I can see where if many people depend on a company, some need to prevent arbitrary cutoffs of service is needed if the service is needed for life--such as heating, food, ER service, etc. Twitter is not needed for basic survival.
- obiefernandez 6y agoI see that people are complaining it's too little, too late. But c'mon, there's a certain amount of appreciation due, isn't there?
- thameera 6y agoNot only that, the account could have done worse in the coming weeks - so it's better to be late than never.
- dionian 6y agoIt seems cowardly to me to use force to shut people down. But it's a free country and they own their platform, so i think it should be allowed. I just think it will allow for more competition for Twitter.
- jennyyang 6y agoYes, I think this is actually it. After he basically commanded them to "Stop the Steal", I said that Facebook and Twitter would ban him. I also said that nuclear war was also on the table. If he is so unAmerican that he would actually tell his mob to attack the Capitol buildings, he really doesn't care about America at all. Being as petulant as he is, nuclear war is very much on the table. That's how crazy this situation is.
- tptacek 6y agoThe same thing happened with Gab, which was pushed nearly out of existence after (iirc?) the Tree of Life shooting.
- johnchristopher 6y agoSame line of thinking among officials and POTUS's entourage is being reported (I don't know if the source is reliable) : > High-ranking national-security officials have spent the last 24 hours scrambling to figure out how to keep their commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, from inciting further violence at home, spilling national secrets, or sparking last-minute confrontations with international foes. > The concerns in the upper echelons of the administration’s national-security community range from fears inside the Pentagon that the president will do or say something that effectively throws the U.S. into a military confrontation with another country to anxieties in the intelligence apparatus that Trump will divulge classified intelligence on his way out, according to four officials who spoke with The Daily Beast about the matter. All requested to remain anonymous in order to speak more openly about the discussions. > “This isn’t a hypothetical anymore,” said one senior administration official. “This is real. What happened yesterday changed the calculus. People are concerned about [the president’s] state of mind.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/after-capitol-riot-trump-officials-rush-to-keep-him-from-sparking-another-conflictat-home-or-abroad https://www.thedailybeast.com/after-capitol-riot-trump-offic...
- Mtinie 6y agoIf they were really that concerned V.P. Pence would have support of the Cabinet and could invoke the 25 Amendment. It’s quite possible what you relayed is true. However, coming from The Daily Beast you need to take things reported with a grain of salt.
- tempsy 6y agoMe thinks this will have huge implications for big tech. A Pandora’s box was just opened.
- bdibs 6y agoThat private businesses can keep people off of their properties?
- valvar 6y agoPretty sure that is exactly what will change.
- tempsy 6y agoclearly it’s more than that. these companies are more than just private companies they are social utilities. and might be regulated as such in the future. that’s my point.
- dannyw 6y agoI’ve been sitewide banned from Reddit twice. It’s always been this way.
- valvar 6y agoYou're not the president of the United States.
- colejohnson66 6y agoThere really shouldn’t be any distinction. The President, while a very powerful figure, is still a citizen. If we’re going to complain about rich people having privileges that poorer people don’t, then Trump is no different in that respect. Regardless, if Trump wants to, he has official means (through whitehouse.gov) to issue statements. He choose Twitter when he had other options.
- 6y ago
- dropit_sphere 6y agoA world governed by patch notes. Hoo boy.
- 6a74 6y agoFinally!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- brokenwallet 6y agoUpdate: People are more emotionally involved with this than I am. I'll avoid getting involved.
- ineedasername 6y agoHe spoke to them for over an hour telling them how angry they should be, that they should go to the Capitol, and that they should fight. The mob did as he told them to do.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- handmodel 6y agoIt is 100% certain that the riots would not have happened without him and the things he Tweeted. I don't even see how you can make that argument honestly.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ve55 6y agoThis ban seems to heavily take advantage of the current moment, as it's obvious that he has tweeted worse things in the past. It's strange that they picked such a poor way to justify the ban when they could have made a significantly stronger case, and in doing so could have convinced millions more people that they are trying their best to apply policies evenly. For example, I have a hard time imagining why they chose to specifically quote "American Patriots", as if that somehow contributes to the straw that broke the camel's back. Perhaps they have a strategic reason for going about this how they did, but I think it will have some negative 2nd/3rd order effects. that they haven't yet realized. I imagine we are still only in the early days of the conflicts that are to come in this sphere (and I'd include just about every company and political faction in them, unfortunately). (Also because apparently I have to state this explicitly in every comment related to Trump: I do not support Trump, his supporters, the recent events that occurred at the capitol, etc etc)
- handmodel 6y agoI think the logic isn't that hard. Person says bad things to whip up a mob - Twitter unsure to take him seriously or literally. Mob actually materializes and several people die - Twitter sure they now have to take him literally
- notyourwork 6y agoI think its easier to ban him based on political justification than it would be to ban in in a post-presidency. I also think they are less than interested in enduring his antics as a former president considering how much he abuses the court system to get his way.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- alex_young 6y agoIt's really important realize this distinction. Imagine a newspaper printing a letter to the editor from a person whose words have previously incited a riot. I find it surprising that they enabled the account again at all after the 6th.
- m3kw9 6y agoWouldn’t this create more tension by the violent rioters taking it as an offensive to the president by the left?
- forgetfulness 6y agoThat'd be one more putsch instead of as many as Trump can whip up from Twitter.
- kitkat_new 6y agothanks - a little less crap on the internet
- HarryHirsch 6y agoThis is not a good idea. Whatever you think about Trump, he is still holding public office.
- throwaway4good 6y agoIt is a bad idea. And it seems coordinated with a parler ban at app store level and a purge of other political figures. It just begs for a counter move. He is still the president, not all out of options.
- alexfringes 6y ago(null)
- throwaway4good 6y agoIt is bad for a number of reasons. Mostly because the us at this moment needs healing, not further escalation of conflict.
- 9front 6y agoThere's Parler! The FREE speech social network.
- st1x7 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25691631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25691631
- Andrew_nenakhov 6y agoWhich will soon be banned from their platforms by Apple and Google. :-\
- tomp 6y agoApparently Apple and Google already want to ban Parler.
- throwaway4good 6y agoHim plus a number of other right wing figures. So is he about to move to parler which is about to be suspended by Apple and Google?
- Rebelgecko 6y agoIs it just my perception, or is their actual justification using the 2 quoted tweets kinda weak? Interpreting his boycott of an event as a call to violence seems like a huge stretch. It seems like they wanted to shoehorn a justification using his 2 latest tweets when the actual reason goes back further.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoNo, that's not just you. They probably wanted to align with other social media platforms, who had already permanently suspended him yesterday.
- thrill 6y agoThey hardly need to make a court case at this point.
- danaliv 6y agoThey didn’t just look at the tweets; they looked at how they’re actually being received. I think that’s a crucial distinction.
- copperwater69 6y agoI'm receiving your benign post in a harmful manner. What should we do in this situation?
- scoopertrooper 6y agoHow many police officers have you killed since receiving this post?
- copperwater69 6y agoThe same amount killed from those two trump tweets
- 6y ago
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y agoOne unfortunate side effect of this I see happening is that the big social media companies will crack down use of the platforms for any kind of protest activity, citing incitement to violence.
- 1MachineElf 6y agoProbably, but only if the violence doesn't serve them. There will be an undefined but overtly demonstrated acceptable violence. Any words of incitement will be given the most charitable of interpretations.
- foolfoolz 6y agoglobal communications platforms should allow all legal posts. this is dumb precedent and these 2 tweets are pretty tame
- AncientPC 6y agoWhat happens when two countries' laws conflict with one another?
- williamsmj 6y agoIf no tv network will carry his remarks live, and no social network will give him a posting account, then he has no way of communicating with the American people and it seems pretty difficult to make the case that he is able to carry out his duties. So I guess what I'm saying is: invoke the 25th amendment because he got kicked of Twitter.
- leephillips 6y agoSeveral presidents managed before Twitter, TV, or electricity.
- williamsmj 6y agoIt was a joke.
- jessaustin 6y agoIf no tv network will carry his remarks... Please, God, let it be so. Every time I talk to my parents I have to hear about and respond to the latest outrage as reported by CNN and MSNBC. "Mom, they're just winding you up." "No Dad, that doesn't actually seem so important." Good grief.
- botwriter 6y agoThis will kill twitter the only reason I had a twitter account was to view your presidents tweets. If he moves on to parlour he'll take an awful lot of people with him and then twitter has no power at all to controll the narative.
- Kreotiko 6y agoEasy to apply these policies only now that he lost the election.
- meekmockmook 6y agoAs I said in the Apple-Parler thread: Massive Big Tech conglomerates must be busted through antitrust enforcement and Section 230 must be updated to ban predatory algorithms which have inflamed 7 years of sectarian chaos and violence. It's not a free speech issue: It's about Too Big To Fail. They have too much power, beyond that of even the world's largest governments. This cannot stand.
- bmitc 6y agoIt’s a little surprising to me that of all things, i.e. the banning of a racist, sexist, traitor, and inducer of violence on social media, is what causes Hacker News to say big tech needs to be busted, and not the multiple violations and manipulations they themselves have been a part of. I do agree that many corporations are too powerful. This whole situation is the result of a century of corporatism in America, corporations using their influence and (domestic) evangelical religious extremists to further their capitalist goals. It’s why "under God" is in the Pledge of Allegiance, and it’s how the modern day Republicans came to be. I encourage anyone to watch Adam Curtis’ documentaries. He nails it on the head of how we got here.
- idoh 6y agoHow could you break up Twitter, what's your plan?
- cwkoss 6y agoHalf joking, but force them to federate their content to P2P networks like Mastodon?
- meekmockmook 6y agoWhy joke? Thats a viable way to do it. No social network shoild be so large that massive global events can be shaped by it's executives.
- undersuit 6y agoWhat's to stop them from confederating afterwards?
- mmastrac 6y agoFour years too late. Maybe even more.
- staunch 6y agoWhatever you think about Trump, he has First Amendment rights under the U.S. constitution. If violating the law, he should be punished, but it is not up to private companies to revoke constitutional rights. Trump still has the right to speak publicly. No one should wish that he be silenced by private companies. Trump should just tell his supporters to go to his own web site and communicate with them that way. There's no reason he has to use Twitter. He can use email. It might even be more effective for him.
- whylo 6y agoThe first amendment prevents the government from making laws which prevent free speech. Private companies aren't obliged to host that speech if they don't want to
- staunch 6y agoYes, of course, safe to say everyone on HN knows this. Twitter banning Trump isn't such a big deal. He can get a web site and email service from AWS or other cloud providers. But what if the cloud providers ban his web site and email? What if backbone internet providers and data centers banned his IT team from running their own web/email servers? There is no government run internet. It is all run by private companies. Which means that if private companies wanted to, they could restrict access to anyone they want. This is clearly wrong. We either need to create a government run internet backbone + data centers, or to draw some line at how much power private internet companies have. The Supreme Court could decide that the internet is so vital to the First Amendment in the modern world that the top N social media or internet infrastructure companies have to behave as if they were government run with respect to the First Amendment.
- FireBeyond 6y agoYou have the right to speak. You have no right to an audience, nor to compel a third party to spend time, effort and money providing you either audience or amplification. He has the White House web site. He wouldn't even use the @potus Twitter account because he'd rather have people follow his personal account.
- 6y ago
- californical 6y agoI understand how Twitter says that these are relevant to the recent events, but it feels like they were just sitting around waiting for him to tweet something they could latch onto to use as a reason to remove him. Because these tweets seem innocent compared to so many of his others. Really not sure how I feel about this though... weighing between the benefits of allowing open speech on “town square” Internet forums versus enforcing their right as a private entity and removing his violence-inciting self. Either way, this is a huge deal
- dannyw 6y agoThere’s probably some political infighting going on at twitter’s decision making committee. Maybe some people threatened to resign or something, or maybe @jack just told them to ban Trump now.
- thih9 6y ago> these tweets seem innocent compared to so many of his others. I think they wanted to say that the context matters. I.e. with actual violence happening not long ago and with a possibility of more violence in future, I’d say that posting relatively innocent tweets contributes to building tension.
- dillondoyle 6y agoI agree and they should have articulated the clear and present danger of this much better. E.g. the inauguration as one very clear example They are already planning for the 20th on different platforms. It just takes one more tweet from DJT to light another fire. And the problem is these people don't care what the content is, they read what they want to read because the Q conspiracy is insane. Even if he tweeted "mmm my mcdonalds burger tonight is extra good" they would read something insane into it
- u678u 6y agoThe problem with these FB & Twitter bans is its easy to creat a new social media platform, esp if you can get exclusives like this. The main reason I joined twitter (and tiktok) is because I saw so many sites and newspapers with the links and watermarks. If Parlor or what ever site does host trump it quickly becomes a new app you should get, it doesn't shut him down, there will be fewer controls.
- danijelb 6y agoThat's the beauty of the free markets. You can always compete. The problem is that alternative social networks such as Parler don't have wide enough audience as Twitter. But that's also an effect of the free market. If there were enough people who value having access to the kind of content which can be found on Parler then it would be more popular. Twitter is simply catering to the majority of consumers. The market interest for networks like Parler, Gab, Voat, Thedonald.win, etc. is simply too small for any of them to succeed. Their audience is also too narrow, it's just politics and almost no discussion about anything else. If a ton of people would suddenly move to Parler it would mean the majority wants it and Twitter would respond by enabling the kind of content they are banning now.
- rootsudo 6y agoComparing today's media, to the media of old - where they colluded to hide FDR couldn't walk because of the shame/and attacks it'd lead to now, where Tech companies overtook print media and now themselves control the pitchforks and direct anger at the masses. 1984 Two minutes of hate is real, so very real, and it's quite sad how most people welcomed this into the world. I've deleted my social media, twitters years before, and have divested myself completely from other platforms. There is nothing to be valued, gained or such, The Internet should always be a decentralized, fragmented piece of human technology. The more centralized it becomes, the more authoritarian it is. And the orgs that become in control point the finger at others to show off how it's not them. -- I hold no opinion on Trump, but these tech companies have to much power and it's a game of bidding where they can creep more and more into our lives and general lobbying to make the case that life is "better" with them here then it ever was before. I can't say if it really is.
- soared 6y agoTrump gave Twitter the power though, so I don’t think his suspension supports your logic. He was the user who communicates only over Twitter, purposefully de-fragmenting it. He could e easily protected himself from this by publishing the same content across many different platforms. The tech giants only have power when users give it to them. Trump could’ve negated their power very easily, without legislation.
- EmilioMartinez 6y agoYou might enjoy this take on the matter: https://youtube.com/watch?v=YtRfmao1vvs https://youtube.com/watch?v=YtRfmao1vvs
- Rolpa 6y ago>I hold no opinion on Trump, Everyone has an opinion about Trump. Are you too afraid to say yours? I'm asking in good faith here - not trolling.
- sdwa 6y ago>I hold no opinion on Trump Utterly baffling and genuinely inconceivable. My imagination is running wild trying to imagine what sort of person you might be, assuming you are being honest here.
- simplecto 6y agoNow that the king of rage bait is gone will we will see engagement and revenue drop? Or has that slack been taken up by Bitcoin?
- newfeatureok 6y agoIf @realDonaldTrump said all the same things through, let's say, White House press releases, but through Twitter it was relatively "clean" do you think Twitter would've banned it regardless?
- dhjdjdjdndhdbs 6y agoI fear REAL violence is coming. If people feel trapped and their voices aren’t heard it is just going to create a spring release. Like a cornered animal. These political activist employees and executives are going to get real people killed in the name of owning the President. Everyone on every side is so wrong here it is heart breaking. Trump has truly broken both the Left and the Right’s minds of this country.
- postalrat 6y agoI think a lot of people on the left know what they did and said is wrong. And they only did it for what they thought was the greater good. For now they can't even begin to consider how they might have been wrong. (For the record I wanted Sanders to win the democratic nomination and have never voted for anyone on the right)
- lumpenprole 6y ago"Real people" already got killed. Might be time to put down the Both Sides bong.
- NE2z2T9qi 6y agoI’m not even opposed to Biden, who is basically just a moderate Republican. But each day I get more and more outraged by the non-stop media smears and hysteria against Trump. I find my blood boiling at the hypocrisy—and I’m basically just a passive observer. For a real Trump supporter—of which there are tens of millions—I can only imagine the intensity of the hatred and anger that this speech suppression and new impeachment charade will cause. Instead of letting an old man go off to pasture and maybe start a little media company, they want to keep attacking and fanning the flames.
- kart23 6y agoI think twitter needed to do this far sooner, they showed that some people are held to different standards and allowed to break the rules. Someone followed religiously by half the country is not just going to go away. Gab is going to have massive growth now, and will further increase the divide between left and right viewpoints. This is not something to celebrate.
- whb07 6y agoThis seems eerily like the academia and elites supporting Stalin right before they got sent to gulags. Baffling how most people on this site fail to see it.
- shiado 6y ago74 million voters. This is not going to play out well. There's really no coming back from this moment, the technocratic elite have changed American democracy forever. Edit: I mean this in the way Snowden tweeted yesterday, it will be interesting how this plays out for better or worse, but it is a monumental policy shift that will be a date marked in history books.
- cecja 6y agoIt's not 74 million the last time I checked it was 40% of them. Stop spreading FUD, stop inciting violence sit in your troll cave and shut the fuck up.
- TeaDrunk 6y agoAmerican democracy was changed long before this. (see: southern strategy, freeing of slaves, allowing women the vote...)
- jupdarter 6y agoI doubt it’s as big as you say. Watch interviews with normal Trump voters (ie, not the meme-lords and q nuts), and they have expressed a pretty high degree of frustration with his Twitter habit for most of his presidency. Given how long Twitter has put up with the obvious abuse of the latitude they uniquely gave him, a lot of people may be grumpy but will understand. Had they done this years ago and NOT given him such exceptional latitude, then you’d probably have seen much larger blowback.
- JoBrad 6y agoAdditionally, even those who voted for him likely voted _against_ the other candidate rather than _for_ Pres Trump. His approval ratings have never been high, and are lower at this point in his term than any other recent President except Pres Carter. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
- freewilly1040 6y ago45% of Republicans support the actions at the capitol https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/01/06/US-capitol-trump-poll https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20...
- plumeria 6y agoWill politicians continue using Twitter et al after this? Seems a bit risky to reach out to their followers using a third-party. Why don’t they have their own website?
- krapp 6y agoMost politicians don't fan the flames of hatred, misinformation and sedition from their Twitter account so they'll be fine.
- ivnubinas 6y agoYou don't even need a twitter account when there's blue not matter who culture.
- jackson1442 6y agoMost politicians really _shouldn't_ be using Twitter in the way Trump was. It's a good tool to connect with your constituents and make short announcements, but he was using it as a sole means of announcing policy and change, including firing people. Those official communications–anything "from the office of"– should be released through official US Government channels. Regardless, unless you're planning on inciting a raid on the capitol, you probably won't be banned as a politician. Twitter literally bent over backwards to still allow Trump to use Twitter even though he consistently broke the platform's rules.
- fullshark 6y agoYou gotta go where the audience is.
- runarberg 6y agoI’m not a politician, but I’m guessing: yes. I don’t see a reason why most mainstream politicians need to distance them self from this platform in light of this. I’m sure most main stream politicians do not associate them self with the type of rhetoric that got Trump kicked form the platform, and are fine with continuing to use it.
- arpinum 6y agoHe was already in the process of ditching Twitter for a right wing platform. Twitter dragged their feet for so long because they didn’t want a competitive platform to take his audience. This isn’t Twitter suddenly finding their morals, they have little to lose now that he is moving on.
- Zelphyr 6y agoI fully support the efforts to impeach President Trump, if for no other reason than to prevent him from being able to run again. I also support Twitter's right to kick him off their platform. That said; it seems a stretch to me to permanently delete his account based on the two tweets they cite. They're about to break their necks trying to find problems in those two tweets when they have a smorgasbord of inflammatory tweets over the years to pick from. Saying he won't attend the inauguration was the final straw? It really seems disingenuous on their part. I would respect them far more if they had said, "You know what? Our decision to reinstate his account after twelve hours was a mistake. Donald Trump is clearly harmful to our republic and we will no longer give him a voice on our platform. His account is therefore permanently suspended."
- busymom0 6y agoI am loving people who don't understand that they are literally supporting billionaires while claiming to be anti-corporate resistance. Definition of Liberal used to be: "Willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas. Relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise." I am still a liberal. But I am not the current liberal.
- blisterpeanuts 6y ago2020 (and probably 2018) is when the Democrat Party became the party of billionaires and digerati, while the Republican party represented the working class, manufacturers, farmers, etc. Most rank-and-file private unions (plus police and fire) polled strongly for Trump and Republicans. It's almost a 180 turnaround from the days when the Democrats represented the "common working man" and the Republicans were the party of rich CEO's and business owners.
- rtx 6y ago2024 is when you will see the effects of this realignment.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agomaybe 2022. The midterm elections are going to be very interesting.
- lumpenprole 6y agoI'm not sure that the Republican Party can maintain the current rube/scumbag coalition that long without Trump.
- sixothree 6y agoThe right has promised 4 years of terror. I'm over it already.
- throw_m239339 6y ago
- dannyw 6y agoI don’t like the argument here. I don’t think these two tweets are inciting violence. I read a lot of ultra-right-wing communities (those who called for bringing arms on the 6th, starting a violent revolution, etc), and both of these tweets were not perceived as a call to arms but rather a depressing confession of defeat.
- eloff 6y agoThese social media companies have suddenly found their spine now that the Trump administration had less than two weeks left. Where was that courage when they had something to lose?
- stevecalifornia 6y agoTwitter talked past the sale. If they had just said 'We banned this account.' we all would have moved on. Instead they justified it with some very, very weak and flimsy interpretation of his last posts. I am no Trump supporter and I want him out of office asap, but Twitter managed an unforced error on the simplest layup ever.
- Karupan 6y agoI don't have a horse in the game - but I feel this will only deepen the divide in US politics. Trump and his followers aren't going to disappear. They will be even more isolated in a new site/app they setup and without this level of public scrutiny. This is an impossible position for Twitter either way.
- holler 6y agoIf anyone would like to discuss this in a live chat I've posted it to Sqwok - https://sqwok.im/p/Qc6NbMulLuK5PA https://sqwok.im/p/Qc6NbMulLuK5PA
- DamnInteresting 6y agoTo all those saying that this account should not be suspended because a president's messages should not be blocked, Twitter did not ban @POTUS, only @realDonaldTrump. The office of the president is not silenced, only the personal account of the current president. If something important comes up he can tweet via @POTUS (for another 12 days or so, anyway).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- allendoerfer 6y agoDoes anybody have a solution to the bigger underlying question of de-platforming and censorship on online platforms? As far as I can tell, there are two general viewpoints: a) Censorship is bad, free speech is good. You should counter bad arguments with better arguments. b) There are types of speech, which are proven to lead to violence in the long-run. Also, some things can be proven as untrue. Lies are bad. I have to say, I agree with both of those points. I think group A is missing the point, that there are echo chambers and people radicalizing within their filter-bubbles up to the point of literal terrorism, while group B is missing that the power to censor can be misused by bad actors in the future and that silenced people will not just change their mind. Is there a proper answer for someone like me? Where should I stand on this? I am leaning towards group A, while acknowledging that radicalization does happen and dearly worrying about perversion of words like "truth" or "fact" ("your/my truth", "alternate facts").
- mrlala 6y ago>Does anybody have a solution to the bigger underlying question of de-platforming and censorship on online platforms? Well as far as politics is concerned.. the US Government (and other governments) should make their own twitter like platforms which every active representative has an account, and ANYTHING (barring pure illegal) can be posted. It doesn't even need to have an actual user base, it can just be somewhere to go to see what your politician is thinking. In terms of the average person? There is no solution for one that is owned by a corporation. An offshoot of the above is the government could make a social media site that is covered under "free speech that the government cannot take away" and anything not blatantly illegal can be posted/said. I would not advocate for this though.. I think we have plenty of options. But the one for politicians only is something that should be seriously considered.
- allendoerfer 6y agoThat's a bad idea, because you are cementing power. It would be hard for contenders to get into office. The incumbents already have a bigger platform they can leverage. I was also getting at the fact, that Twitter, being a private company or not, basically became infrastructure and was thinking about how it should behave, whether that would be enforced by laws or not.
- blisterpeanuts 6y ago<parody> Okay, let's retroactively suspend John McCain for singing "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb bomb Iran" on a hot mike. President George W. Bush should be suspended for invading Iraq on false or flimsy pretexts, resulting in 6,000 American soldiers killed and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Obama lied when he said "you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan" eleven times and this turned out not to be true (90% anyway). Shouldn't the social networks censor patently false and misleading statements by a very influential leader? Ronald Reagan said something about launching the nukes on the USSR, I don't remember the exact quote. Cancel him off social media. Et cetera. </parody> The harm in censorship is that it actually reduces the flow of communication and information, for future historical records as well as for the present.
- deanCommie 6y agohttps://twitter.com/LeftAccidental https://twitter.com/LeftAccidental
- hk__2 6y agoThat’s not censorship (private companies, etc), and reducing the flow of harmful communication is a good thing.
- nilkn 6y agoCensorship can be performed by private companies. From Wikipedia: “Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.”
- sixothree 6y agoIt would be censorship to _force_ a company to say something they didn't want to say. That is clearly taking away their rights to free speech.
- Saint_Genet 6y agoThe downside is that we won’t be able to see his tweets about being banned from Twitter.
- st1x7 6y agoHe still has access to the @POTUS account until the 20th though.
- jpmattia 6y agoThe man just incited an insurrection against Congress. This wasn't a hard decision.
- fullshark 6y agoApparently it was a hard decision cause they only suspended him for 12 hours initially.
- yuchi 6y agoOne thing that’s scary is that his whole history of tweets has been completely been made unaccessible. It’s hard to imagine how much web embed/linked those tweets.
- canoebuilder 6y agoI'd been thinking about that too, when people were speculating the account would be nuked Jan 20. It's quite bizarre the situation we find ourselves in, the way these sort of primary historical documents exist at the whims of certain organizations, not to mention the strict ideological alignment of these organizations. Future historians I'm sure would greatly appreciate if someone started version controlling the web. And people presently alive would probably appreciate it if we could socially work out a way to have communication channels, our ability to exchange information and understand the recent past not under this sort of autocratic control. This goes well past DJT. It would be nice if people, no matter their feelings about Trump, could understand the gravity of this. My shock and disturbance at seeing this is equal to what we saw at the capitol.
- swyx 6y agoTwo extremes of takes here on HN. Either it's "too little too late" or "i don't like unelected tech leaders having the power to deplatform POTUS". The reality is somewhere in the messy middle. If you distance yourself from the blow-by-blow and look at the chronology like a historian might, though, it is really hard to escape the fact that the social media platforms are dumping Trump days before Biden takes over. They profited from him sowing discord, and didn't even bother to finesse the exit. I also am concerned about the long term damage of Trump leaving office continuing to claim the election was stolen. For the next couple decades there will be millions of Americans absolutely convinced that their government is taken over by a massive conspiracy against Trump. These people will put up more protests and violence in future. this is something that cannot be stamped out - Trump has to be convinced or cornered into reversing his stance publicly. That is the only way.
- dageshi 6y agoAlternatively they may have believed they ought to respect the office of the president even if they hated the man in it. And they did right up until the storming of the capitol when they realised there was no amount of damage he wasn't willing to do.
- why5s 6y ago"Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing... After all possibilities have been exhausted" - Somebody that's not Winston Churchill
- busymom0 6y agoQuestion for everyone who's saying "private platform can do whatever." You are against the FDA, EPA, Net Neutrality etc? And how about the baker who refused to bake cake for the gay couple for religious reasons.
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoOr the hotel that tells a black family that there are no vacancies. Or the restaurant that denies service to someone wearing a MAGA hat. "private property, they can do what they want" is indeed a slippery slope.
- notacoward 6y agoIf you want to address people's stance on those unrelated issues, address them (not vague "whoever") when they're brought up (not now). > slippery slope Do I really even need to say anything about that?
- gregd 6y agoI'm not sure how any of this relates to each other. Twitter banned Trump for reasons. FDA and EPA are government regulatory agencies. The baker who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple broke state statutes. How are any of these things related?
- notacoward 6y agoThat is a really bad analogy. AFAICT the vast majority people saying "private platforms can do whatever" are specifically rejecting a first amendment argument, and they're correct. FDA, EPA, etc. have nothing at all to do with that. Even if you broaden it to free speech in general, that's still true. They only become relevant when you're talking about all forms of regulation, but by then you're way beyond what anyone meant to address. With that "are you against" you're just constructing a massive strawman. Don't.
- nxc18 6y agoCan you point to a regulatory body Twitter is beholden to? Maybe ask your congress to set one up. Or maybe ask that “enemy of the United States” and “seditionist” become legally protected categories like sex and race etc. Republicans (who Trump leads) have been in control of government for years. If they wanted special protections they should have made them.
- samizdis 6y agoIt would have helped, IMO, had Twitter banned the account with a statement to the effect of, "With hindsight, we should have done this a couple of days ago when, while ostensibly telling his supporters to go home, Mr Trump actually restated his lies with respect to his 'landslide victory' being stolen, and then flattering the mob he incited by calling them patriots who were loved." The recent tweets are nothing compared with those before the Capitol invasion, and during it. Twitter should present them all in a timeline, for clarity and for history.
- dmitrygr 6y agoI am no trump fan, but reading the two tweets that got him suspended confuses me. Neither of those two tweets encourages violence in any way. What am i missing? The two listed tweets are: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” and “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.” So where do those encourage violence? First one lists how many people voted for him, and his idea that they support the country more than those who did not. Asinine, but not more inflammatory than most politicians say. The second is an answer to a question many have been asking. Also pretty harmless. Honestly, what am I missing?
- dionian 6y agoIt seems to me people are just itching for a reason to justify doing what they want. Lots of people hate trump even in this thread and are happy with censoring of people they dont like, just because they dont like them. It's rather chilling to see.
- sheepz 6y agoyes, this is exactly the way it is. most people are perfectly fine with throwing their ideals out of the window if they were applicable to people they don't like.
- Darmody 6y agoBig tech wants to control who's able to speak, that's all. This whole thing will end up swallowing us all. You'll see.
- danijelb 6y agoThat's just an excuse. I suspect the actual reason for banning him is for hundreds of tweets he made during the last four years for which a normal user would be banned, but he was protected against banning for "public interest" (read: additional traffic to Twitter). These two tweets are just a lame excuse. It would be better if they were honest about the reasons for the ban. But let's be real - no matter what he tweeted now at the end of his presidency he would be banned on Jan 20th. They just sped up the decision a little bit because of what happened few days ago.
- hnaccy 6y agoI find it funny the number of hackernews users who continue to defend or minimize trump's behavior and actions. When a comment describing Trump as fascist (he is one) is flagged due to downvotes it's a bit odd.
- chillwaves 6y agoFascists hate being called on it, even if we are just a few days after a literal attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power in this country. Only 5 people died, so I guess small price to pay to massage some folks' egos.
- paracyst 6y agoThank god.
- admiralspoo 6y agoNote that accounts such as Iran's Kamenei or those associated with groups in Pakistan, which have called for the destruction of Israel, are not banned https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir
- blisterpeanuts 6y agoYet, Twitter, FB, and YT are quick to censor MEMRI and PalWatch, which actively report on vile speeches around the Arab and Muslim world about how Jews are descended from pigs and dogs, etc., the Holocaust was a hoax, on and on. Because "hate speech". Memri in particular, a non-profit translation service, had hundreds of its videos taken down, footage of these speeches and broadcasts, a valuable resource chopped off for political correctness.
- disgrunt 6y agoIn the early-to-mid 20th century, the phrase politically correct was used to describe strict adherence to a range of ideological orthodoxies within politics. In 1934, the New York Times reported that Nazi Germany was granting reporting permits "only to pure 'Aryans' whose opinions are politically correct". [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness
- throwaway_lolol 6y agoHere's one from the Chinese Embassy in US that literally supports a genocide. > Study shows that in the process of eradicating extremism, the minds of Uygur women in Xinjiang were emancipated and gender equality and reproductive health were promoted, making them no longer baby-making machines. They are more confident and independent. https://t.co/lykDhByEiL https://t.co/lykDhByEiL https://twitter.com/ChineseEmbinUS/status/1347247602094534658 https://twitter.com/ChineseEmbinUS/status/134724760209453465...
- EmilioMartinez 6y agoThey figured out how to market genocide to western audiences
- throwawaysea 6y agoIs Twitter also going to ban AOC for inciting and participating in a riot at Capitol Hill in 2018? Because she not only encouraged an occupation of the Capitol then, but she also directly participated in it (https://theintercept.com/2018/11/13/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-sunrise-activists-nancy-pelosi/ https://theintercept.com/2018/11/13/alexandria-ocasio-cortez...). The same group repeated their illegal act multiple times (https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2019/02/25/kentucky-youth-lead-250-sunrise-mcconnells-office-say-kentucky-needs-green-new https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2019/02/25/kentucky-yo...). Each time, it was cheered on by politicians who still retain their Twitter handles and each time the media did not cover it or condemn the act like they have the recent capitol riot. Twitter and other big tech companies are clearly using two different standards, based on whether you are a far left progressive or not. And this suspension of Trump makes no sense given that there is no evidence that he incited violence. Asking people to march somewhere is not inciting violence. It simply isn't and everyone repeating the word 'incite' is being disingenuous, especially if they are not consistent and don't apply it to all the BLM riots in 2020. This move is therefore just a disgusting act of censorship, and it sets a precedent and highlights further the need for alternate platforms to big tech companies based in overwhelmingly left-leaning cities with overwhelmingly left-leaning employee bases.
- MattGaiser 6y agoDoes anyone have an archive of the tweets? As this is a historical loss if the content is gone.
- gnulinux 6y agoThere are many, internet archive, reddit bots, @POTUS account archive hosted by us.gov. I even have a personal archive. Don't you worry.
- stephenhess 6y agoAs much as I love not having to see Trump on Twitter now.. the future of social media is going to be fully decentralized and distributed (whether we like it or not). The Free World will need a much better immune response to this kind of radicalization than deplatforming people.
- redisman 6y agoHopefully the future for social media is a quick death. Let’s move on to something a bit more productive
- zyxzevn 6y agoWhy not every other politician? They are all the same. Let us just go a small step further and let facebook and twitter choose the next presidents.
- volak 6y agoOne could make a fairly good argument they already do. Especially if you watched the testimony from that professor explaining how Google shifts search results to push GOTV in certain distinct counties while excluding others. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSTHgoaVtSw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSTHgoaVtSw
- roberto 6y ago> Why not every other politician? They are all the same. Please elaborate.
- busymom0 6y ago"Willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas. Relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise." - definition of what's supposed to be a liberal. Just a reminder for those who have forgotten.
- africanboy 6y agoas I've said for Facebook before: too little, too late.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- blunte 6y agoI have plenty of karma to spend here. While I tend to be a caring person, I recognize that some people are so broken that there is no hope for rehabilitation of them. Donald Trump clearly has been trying to seek approval and validation from people forever. Likely this began in his childhood, if accounts of his father's demeanor are to be believed. Also, given his father's characterization as a slum lord, there is little doubt in my mind that this is a family problem that has been passed down for some time; the fathers were mistreated and rejected as children, and likewise they are excessively hard on their children. Donald Trump has been, likely out of human survival necessity, creating his own fantasy reality in his mind from a very young age. And frankly, with enough self delusion, one can truly believe anything. He appears to truly believe he was cheated, and that he has always been cheated. Ironically, the facts visible from the outside indicate that he is usually the one cheating others ("university" students, debtors, investors, constituents, etc.). He is doomed, whether by New York State attorneys for his property tax cheats, or perhaps his inflated property sales (foreign money laundering), or other crimes. But more significantly, he is doomed because his character and behavior guarantees that he will never get the satisfaction and confirmation that he has been needing his entire life. It's actually quite sad. But frankly he is old, and he has fucked so many people against their wishes, literally and figuratively, that I have no compassion at this point. Let him burn, or drown in his own misery. What is more disturbing is the mass of ignorant followers who have thrown their lives and families in turmoil because of him (and because of Fox News and its like). Some of my elder family are in that category. I remember them before this period, and I know they are ultimately good people; but somehow they need a serious readjustment. To use the really tired, annoying expression, they need to become "woke". Social media better get a grip. It has a very difficult job, because there is no clear line where free speech becomes excessively false rhetoric and disinformation. But it does occur at some point, and it absolutely gets leveraged by groups with agendas. We have ample evidence of how social media has been used at least since 2015 by Russian-related groups to destabilize "democracies" (in quotes now because what was once believe to be a democracy has now been shown to be more of a "democracy as long as it doesn't includes stuff that really bothers us"). I see no easy solution here. The best solution is broader education, more travel and experience, and more connections with people outside our own little bubbles. But that's not going to happen. At this point I'm not willing to bet whether an environmental disaster or a geopolitical disaster will end human life first. As for Donald Trump, I pity him and wish him to have exactly what he has now. Lots of stolen or debt-forgiven wealth, women who never want him for him, horrible golf skills, and tiny hands. Farewell.
- rsp1984 6y agoLet me take the (probably extremely unpopular) position of saying this a really coward move by Twitter. I get it, they don't like Trump, and who could blame them for it. But Trump has said and tweeted far worse stuff than what Twitter now sees as cause for suspension. The reality is that Twitter didn't want to silence him as long as he was still president for political and business reasons. Now that it's clear his chances for a 2nd term have gone to 0, they just have no more backlash to fear. Those two tweets as reason for the suspension is a blatant farce. So, sorry Twitter, I'm not buying it. To be credible you should have suspended the guy much earlier. Let the downvotes begin!
- paganel 6y agoIt's a purge, had just read 5 minutes ago that they had suspended Michael Flynn's account, now I'm seeing that FB has decided to ban a community of over half a million people [1] supposedly because their political opinions are not in the best interest of FB the company right at this moment. Of course, I had to get all that info from thedonald.win because almost no-one else is talking about this. Coincidentally, I also think thedonald.win is only hours away from having their domain name taken from under them. This is crazy, crazy stuff. If it matters I'm not an American citizen, have never set foot in the US (even though it's a country I admire in many ways, just right now I'm reading a selection of Anti-Federalist papers in order to try and understand it better), have grown up as a kid in Ceausescu's one-party state Romania and I have to tell you that this doesn't look good. [1] https://twitter.com/BrandonStraka/status/1347592064322719744 https://twitter.com/BrandonStraka/status/1347592064322719744
- TT3351 6y agoAs an American, I will tell you the tweet author you quote is not a reliable narrator.
- paganel 6y agoThere are lots of non-reliable narrators on FB and Twitter (I ironically liked a witch's Suggested Page on FB just two days ago), that's no valid reason to ban them.
- TT3351 6y agoI wasn't suggesting that user should be banned; but that a quick glance at his profile and feed can tell me he lies a lot, and if he's your lens into America, you will not be seeing reality.
- mediumdeviation 6y ago> Of course, I had to get all that info from thedonald.win because almost no-one else is talking about this. Except on the news media [1], or the largest politics community on one of the largest social networks on the Internet [2]. [1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-bans-michael-flynn-sidney-powell-qanon-account-purge-n1253550 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/twitter-bans-michael-... [2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ktcafe/twitter_bans_michael_flynn_sidney_powell_in_qanon/ https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ktcafe/twitter_ba...
- loloquwowndueo 6y agoIt takes zero guts to ban a guy who is days away from becoming powerless. They should have done this years ago but were too afraid of retaliation from the White House. Wimps.
- woeirua 6y agoIt would've been so much easier to justify yesterday. Twitter always seems to be behind on these decisions.
- canoebuilder 6y agoThis is wrong. This is not the way we want to go forward. We have laws and courts to prosecute illegality. It is urgent we translate the principle of Free Speech, from the country in which these platforms were founded, into an online context. >Our public interest framework exists to enable the public to hear from elected officials and world leaders directly. It is built on a principle that the people have a right to hold power to account in the open. What about the people who can never make it to elected office because their communication channels are nuked for WrongThink before their political lives can even get off the ground. Do we want the realm of acceptable discourse set by an insular group with radical ideas? I hope there's broad agreement the answer to that is no, even from those who see themselves at present mostly in line with the small group with radical ideas. "It's a private business they can do what they want" is outdated thinking to address these issues. I don't currently have the all the answers here. But I do know we need answers to this problem.
- Trias11 6y agoRevenge ban. This will hit them back hard in 4 yrs.
- yters 6y agoYet twitter doesn't ban the iranian ayatollah for inciting violence against Israelis, which actually does result in significant violence as opposed to the potential for violence.
- NE2z2T9qi 6y agoI give a lot of leeway to private companies, but there is something deeply concerning about Facebook and Twitter deciding what politicians are “acceptable”. Whether you like him or hate him, Donald Trump is a mainstream politician as evidenced by the tens of millions of votes he got. And, there is a non-trvial chance he’d like to run for elected office again. But Twitter and Facebook and several companies seem to explicitly be saying, “no, we will not allow that.” It’s not a power I want Jack Dorsey or Zuck to have.
- bananabiscuit 6y agoWe don’t have to imagine. #BLM incited many riots which killed many people, what action did Twitter take there?
- mrkurt 6y agoSuspended: https://twitter.com/blm https://twitter.com/blm
- FDSGSG 6y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20130825024428/https://twitter.com/blm https://web.archive.org/web/20130825024428/https://twitter.c... https://web.archive.org/web/20170718112930/https://twitter.com/BLM https://web.archive.org/web/20170718112930/https://twitter.c... ?
- jiojfdsal3 6y agoStrangely enough, Twitter's former CEO Dick Costolo said this in October: "Me-first capitalists who think you can separate society from business are going to be the first people lined up against the wall and shot in the revolution. I'll happily provide video commentary." @dickc was never suspended. He still has his account.
- kennywinker 6y agoThat really doesn’t feel like inciting or calling for riots or violence to me. Maybe if @dickc had a large and heavily armed following there’d be more subtext to read between the lines... (i.e. “and we should start this riot now”)
- spiritplumber 6y agoI thought it was going to be the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- quotemstr 6y agoIt's sad: everyone claims to be in favor of "democracy" --- yet when a tiny number of unaccountable, anonymous, biased people inside big tech companies place limits on what the whole world can say, people cheer. When you support the kind of arbitrary governance, you're cheering for authoritarianism, cheering for oppression, and ultimately cheering for a kind of tech feudalism. Don't give me this "it's a private company" line: unaccountable individuals at corporations can deny you transportation, speech, and financial services --- they can ruin your life merely because they dislike you. Yes, tech companies can't take away your freedom. They can't put you in jail. But they can effectively exile you from civilization. Should private individuals have that power? I get it. Some people are just fundamentally uncomfortable with democracy: public consensus is a messy way to govern a society. Besides: Twitter and other tech companies are, right now, making the decisions that you think are right. But what you're essentially doing is opting into a VC-funded startup that offers you cool stuff at an unsustainably low price. When the VCs demand a profit, that company will raise its prices, and you, locked in, will be forced to pay, forever. Power works the same way: give up control to individuals now and you might like the immediate results, but you'll change your mind when those individuals start doing things you dislike, and when they do, you'll have no recourse. Throughout history, we find that people who vote dictators into power regret it later. Let's not repeat that old mistake.
- koolba 6y agoTheir rationale is so bankrupt it doesn’t even deserve to be argued. What a sad day for freedom of expression.
- pixelpoet 6y agoLike others in this thread, I'm worried about the extremely weak way this is presented. The deleted video where he outright lies about having won and even says "we love you" to the rioters would have been far, far more appropriate. Now Trump supporters will focus on to this (which, it pains me to say, is kinda fair) and all hope of a more nuanced discussion of the much more valid reasons is out the window. sigh You'd imagine a company the size and importance of Twitter would have someone there to do a half decent job of this...
- russellbeattie 6y agoFinally. Should have happened five years ago. I deleted all my tweets years ago and now just have a zombie account to keep my username until Twitter disappears into oblivion where it belongs. I encourage you to reward their fecklessness by doing the same. https://tweetdelete.net/ https://tweetdelete.net/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- young_unixer 6y agoI find This whole "incitement to violence is bad" thing to be nonsensical. Political speech is practically always incitement to violence: According to Weber, the state is a "human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." [1] And political discussions are about what the state should do (executive decisions, laws, etc), that is, in which cases it should coerce people, who should it coerce, and what should it do with the result of that coercion (e.g. taxes). Coercion ultimately leads to violence if the coerced individual doesn't surrender. So, I can't take this "incitement to violence is bad" thing seriously. Because if they truly believed that, then all political speech should be banned. [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/state-monopoly-on-violence https://www.britannica.com/topic/state-monopoly-on-violence
- originalvichy 6y agoThis is a Michael Jordan in Space Jam level stretch. Speech is also just vibrations of air and text is just electric charges on circuits.
- radford-neal 6y ago"Political speech is practically always incitement to violence". Yes, but also for a somewhat different reason than you give. What happens when a party gets elected, has control all the levers of government for the next four years, and enacts a law that some people object to? Well, the objectors may march around the legislature chanting "we won't stand for this!". What could they mean, since they have no power to do anything until at least the next election? Such protests happen frequently, by people of all ideologies. Implicit in these protests is the idea that even when a party has control of all parts of government, they still are sensitive to public opinion, just as absolute monarchs are, since there is always the possibility that the people will revolt - either violently, or by lower-level forms of civil disobedience. One major justification for democracy is that it minimizes the chance of civil war, by having the election result mimic the result of a civil war (in which numbers on each side presumably count for a lot), at far less cost. But sensible democratically-elected leaders realize that an election victory does not perfectly mimic the result of civil war (or of less violent forms of struggle), and that even if it did, it may be that their opponents will not judge their chances of success realistically.
- danso 6y agoSorry to go off-topic, but is anyone else logged in to HN and experiencing very slow response times? Except for the times HN has gone down, I've never seen it take 5-10 seconds just to load the front page or any of the comment threads. I'm assuming it has something to do with so many users checking out this thread, which is pretty amazing for a Friday night. (viewing HN in logged out mode is much faster thanks to the caching)
- rubycon22 6y agoYes
- paganel 6y ago+1 from me on the slow times, maybe it's because of this very thread that has attracted lots of interest? I couldn't tell.
- lame-robot-hoax 6y ago9 seconds to load the reply page.
- gregd 6y agoYe
- coolgod 6y agoYup, everypage is super slow.
- dredmorbius 6y agoHN is hugging itself to death.
- nikolay 6y agoTwitter has been agonizing for years. They just give no excuse to millions to keep using their service. They are not Facebook, so, they don't have the same luxury Facebook has - keeping all your pictures, videos, and posts a hostage. I think Indieweb is more relevant today than it ever has been! Also, Twitter boosted its competitor Parler today better than ever. By Google Play blocking Parler, millions will learn how to install Android apps outside of their store and many conservatives will leave iOS for Android for this ability alone!
- stevebmark 6y agoIt's a victory for private platforms when they grow a backbone, stop hiding behind the cowardly cries of "but free speech!", and use principles and morals to drive action. Twitter has bent over backwards _not_ to ban this person. It's been a long time coming.
- RedComet 6y agoThe cyberpunk future is here - a giant corporation that doesn't even make money is censoring the sitting president. All we can do is laugh.
- dukeofdoom 6y agoThis has been an embarrassing incident to those in power because it made them look weak. But calling a populist movement with millions of supporters, terrorists is very short sighted. It will only accelerate the fire. The left soon will control all three branches of government, after an election that many people question, has been simultaneously advocating for censorship of its political adversaries, more draconian civil rights removals under the guise of COVID. The inevitably resulting destruction of more people's livelihoods will create more desperate people. I hope you realize where this is all going. Because its obvious more people will be revolting if this continues, and will organize to resist. Censorship and oppression is not the answer. Letting people voice their grievances, is the last peaceful outlet before actual violence.
- TT3351 6y agoWhat part of attempting to block a Constitutionally mandated process through the use of force is not a terrorist act?
- SpaceRaccoon 6y agoIt seems like a criminal act. But didn't BLM demonstrate that political violence is effective at achieving your political goals? Or is it justified when it's your side committing the terrorism?
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y agoRemind me again of which political goals associated with BLM have been achieved.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- no-s 6y ago>>political goals associated with BLM have been achieved. Perhaps financing the successful Democrat campaign by laundering BLM donations through the ActBlue portal? I don't think all the reports for the last election cycle are in yet. If not that, at least capturing data about progressive donators who could be solicited for contributions...?
- fullshark 6y agoThe justification they give is ridiculous.
- factorialboy 6y agoThis probably hurts Trump more than the impending impeachment.
- king_magic 6y agoFinally, this has been years coming. This was absolutely the right thing to do.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- busymom0 6y ago#WalkAway is a movement of ex liberals who have left the democrat party. Founded by a gay dude, majority blacks, hispanics, gay etc. Had over half a million users who shared their testimonials on why they left the democrat party. Facebook banned the group today along with the founder and all the members.... all 500K of them If gays, blacks, hispanic conservatives aren't allowed, then soon they are coming after you.
- nomy99 6y agoJust a thought, with a cult like following he has, he can easily start a new "twitter" and have a massive following.
- dimal 6y agoThe owners of Gab must be salivating. They said they want him. If he goes, all his followers will too.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bubmiw 6y agoI hate the left right and center. The hypocrisy everywhere and all institutions. But i love my family friends and never censored with them
- bsimpson 6y agoBeyond things that are broadly considered reprehensible (e.g. videos of rape), I'm not convinced that moderation/deplatforming is healthy for society. I definitely get the "my company - my rules" POV. The First Amendment doesn't apply to private spaces. Then again, I'm not convinced that moderators ought to have the power to control what sorts of ideas are interrogated publicly (e.g. in the company of strangers). It's particularly problematic when the social climate at the companies that control these platforms is synonymous with the Progressive echochamber, but it's also hard to imagine any body that would be qualified to police ideas. One of the worst things to happen this decade is the rise of social echochambers, where groups of people intellectually isolate themselves amongst likeminded people, writing-off dissenters as evil strawmen. The groupthink in these echochambers is nudged further to the extremes by the loudmouthed activists who control what ideas people are comfortable expressing. Large groups isolating themselves in these constantly drifting echochambers leads to the problems we saw this week in Washington. I fear making the platforms synonymous with these echochambers will only make this problem worse. Anonymity and free expression have historically been some of the best qualities of the Internet. Anyone can say - and think - anything, and share those thoughts with everyone. That's always included snark, parody, and similar absurdities. People don't always mean what they say - they often might not even know _if_ they mean what they say. Those same qualities make it particularly vulnerable to misinformation and conspiracy theories. Figuring out how to help people understand what's likely to be true without censoring the kinds of ideas people can openly express is one of the great challenges of our time. I really hope we solve it.
- danijelb 6y agoI think that we should look at phone numbers for the solution. I can call my friend on another phone network with no problem. My friend can transfer his number to a third company and I can still reach him on the same phone number. So the solution would need to be a standardized protocol and a guarantee that you can freely switch your whole account to a different provider. Imagine if you're on Twitter and you can follow a person on Parler. Parler has a right to moderate their own private space however they want. Twitter has a right to moderate their space however they want. But - Twitter can't influence how others moderate their spaces. So let's say that you are on Twitter and follow Trump on Twitter. Twitter decides to ban Trump. Trump should be able to migrate his account (with the username and profile history) to Parler and you, using Twitter would still magically follow him as before and would be able to read what he posts in your Twitter feed. Twitter would still be able to not show his tweets in their search, or their trending topics or any proprietary feature of the service, but if someone follows him explicitly, they'd still see his tweets in their timeline.
- disgrunt 6y agoSo when Will Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez be suspended for tweeting support for violent protests? [0] [0]: https://nypost.com/2019/11/03/aoc-tweets-her-support-for-anti-police-protests-rocking-brooklyn/ https://nypost.com/2019/11/03/aoc-tweets-her-support-for-ant...
- 4ggr0 6y agoWhat she wrote on Twitter: "Ending mass incarceration means challenging a system that jails the poor to free the rich. Arresting people who can’t afford a $2.75 fare makes no one safer and destabilizes our community. New Yorkers know that, they’re not having it, and they’re standing up for each other." Where exactly was she inciting violence?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- devpbrilius 6y agoCan you hack into his Rolls Royce? It should have better wind shield than expected.
- rmk 6y agoPretty cynical of Twitter to monetize his tweets with gay abandon and then shut down his account now that he's politically weak and has indicated he's not going to run for a second term. The specific violations they have cited are very mild in comparison to many other tweets in the past. Ditto for Facebook. I suppose they feel like they can strike with impunity now these people are going to be shown the door.
- manfredo 6y agoI agree with Twitter's decision to ban Trump now. He has no effective authority at this point, and is essentially just trolling - and to deadly, if indirect, effect. I also agree with Twitter's decision to keep his while he still wielded meaningful power as a President, despite repeatedly breaking codes of conduct. When he wielded actual power as President, letting the public see his words has value regardless of what those words contained. But now that he's on his way out, they have no more redeeming value. Critics of this decision often point out that this let Trump magnify his voice and spread harmful messages. I disagree. Trump would have tweeted through some other mechanism. We've already seen analogous applications pop up when social media bans big players - see thedonald.win as an example. Doing this would not accomplish anything in terms of limiting the reach of Trump's messages, and would only serve to further reinforce many conservatives' perceptions of bias in social media.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago> The type of person that stormed the capitol will perceive this as an escalation. Who cares? The type of person that stormed the Capitol has shown they are impervious to reality. Time to stop the appeasement.
- rattlesnakedave 6y agoRhetoric like this is why they stormed the capitol.
- JumpCrisscross 6y agoThey were also delusional about the imperviousness of their actions. It doesn’t seem like any of them expected consequences. Underlining that there are consequences should be productive. There are a lot of people hurting in America. It’s a terrible precedent to prioritise people threatening insurrection.
- trumpthrow 6y agoNo punishment for storming a federal building in Portland and wounding federal officers. Let’s not be naive. The narrative was already set.
- e5india 6y agoNo they stormed the capitol because they refused to accept the outcome of an election after their candidate availed himself of every legal avenue of challenge. Fuck those people. The rhetoric that drove them was Trump himself and his stooges in conservative media.
- trumpthrow 6y agoWhy did antifa storm the federal building in Portland and wound. Where were the pitchforks? Fuck antifa.
- sdwa 6y agoIt's not the responsibility of normal people to indulge the crazy satanic paedophile conspiracy theories of total lunatics so that said lunatics won't behave like total animals. They stormed the capitol because they believed complete horse shit about how the election was stolen, when it wasn't, and they were incited to do so by the current president.
- shanemlk 6y agoTwitter, please, devour my soul
- wnevets 6y agoIt only required over 300,000 Americans to die
- AndrewBissell 6y agoMeanwhile Twitter lets neocon and natsec goons advocate for all kinds of policies that would kill 100,000x as many people as died on Wednesday with no consequences whatsoever ....
- mewse-hn 6y agoThey could have done this at any point but it's the day after Trump concedes and now they decide its the safe play.
- hanibash 6y agoGood move by Twitter. Members of congress were almost taken hostage because an obviously lying autocrat wanted to overturn a fair election, and people in this thread are wringing their hands over it. Free speech is to protect people from autocratic governments, not private enterprises. Private companies can choose how they handle speech as they wish.
- victorbojica 6y agoHonestly, I'm more interested in what kind of precedent this will set. I mean, a social platform censoring the president, and more so, banning it. We're living in interesting times.
- salimmadjd 6y agoI think DT helped resurrect Twitter from irrelevance. Which is why they tolerated him for so long. Now that he is past his usefulness, they decided to suspend him.
- OCASM 6y agoWelcome to the Soviet Union of America, where the Left can unperson even the sitting president of the country with full impunity.
- dang 6y agoPlease stop using HN for ideological battle. You've been doing it a lot and we ban accounts that do that, regardless of the ideology they're battling for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the intended spirit (and the rules) when posting here, we'd be grateful. The rules don't depend on how wrong other people are or how badly they behave. Everyone needs to take responsibility for the commons here.
- OCASM 6y agoI think it's a pretty accurate description of what we're seeing now. Leftist government seizes power and enacts a mass purge of dissidents, including the sitting president. This is nothing new in history and I'm simply pointing it out.
- dang 6y agoWhat you "think is pretty accurate" doesn't address whether you're breaking the site rules or not, which your GP comment obviously did. One could hardly find a clearer example. Since you're continuing to do just what I asked you to stop, both elsewhere (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25696892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25696892) and even in replying to the request itself, it seems clear that you don't want to use HN as intended, and I've banned the account.
- busymom0 6y agoBig Tech, Big Oil, Wall Street, media, publishers, etc–every single circle of elites has now banded together to toxify anyone who deigned to support Trump. Basically a variation of "Don't buy from Jews". Very, very dangerous game being played here.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pachico 6y agoI haven't decided yet if I agree with it or not, to be honest. Not for this particular case but in general, as a banning policy. In the meanwhile, though, I enjoy the thought of him being so pissed for being banned.
- busymom0 6y agoCapitol Police open the doors to the U.S. Capitol for the protestors. One officer is heard saying, “I disagree with it, but respect it.” https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1347615998610911234?s=20 https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1347615998610911234?s=...
- RichardHeart 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
- eplanit 6y agoIs this Jack's entry into the 2024 race for potus?
- keithflower 6y agoI support this ban. I’m a physician. In addition to this president inciting a riot, this president and his supporters are complicit in using social media to promote unscientific, self-serving views that strike at the health of my patients and adversely affect American healthcare in general. Enough is enough.
- f430 6y agoThe real danger of this is that this type of action only reinforces the MAGA camp and pushes them to extreme counter-actions. That's 74 million Americans with a large portion of them shooting guns, who feel victimized and have nothing to lose. I'm already hearing a huge spike in the number of private / chartered jets leaving United States. I think they know what's coming next and they don't want to stick around. Many of them have begun moving their assets abroad since the beginning of 2020 as they weren't sure if Biden would be president and raise taxes across the board. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat from Missouri: “We ask it in the name of the monotheistic God, Brahma, and (the) God known by many names, many different faiths,” he said. “Amen, and Awomen.” Can you really blame people who are alarmed by this? I thought the African American students getting a professor fired for using the Chinese filler word "Nige" was peak 2020 but that amen business topped it.
- GhostVII 6y agoTough situation for Twitter to be in, since they are now effectively making a judgement that every other world leaders tweets are OK. IMO they should have banned him on Wednesday, and justified it by saying he incited the riot. Banning him because the latest tweets can be interpreted as inciting violence in the future is a lot harder to consistently apply, especially since my reading of the latest tweets doesn't really seem like they are inciting violence at all. Not sure how you can ban Trump, and then allow leaders like Khamenei to stay on the platform.
- JarlUlvi 6y agoTwitter, FB, Apple, and Google deplatforming counterculture conservatives, libertarians, and rarer non-establishment progressives will just accelerate the emergence of counter-culture, and free speech platforms. Rumble, Gab, Parler, MeWe, and others are just the start. If I was an investor in TWTR, AAPL, FB or GOOG I would be very concerned. They are opening themselves up to class-action, since their current approach is antagonistic to 45% to 50% of their audience. Going after new platforms is a recipe for anti-trust lawsuits. There is no doubt in my mind that they will do the same thing to a popular libertarian, or, progressive that is set for a massive upset of the status quo. And no, I am not talking about an establishment figure.
- RichardHeart 6y agoAfter reading the reasoning, I'm afraid to tweet how I really feel about things now. (seriously.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
- bargl 6y agoThis is gasoline on the fire. When banning someone like donald trump you need to have a great press release for justification. You need to point to something that people who are in the middle will read and think, yeah that makes sense, I'm surprised you didn't do that earlier. Instead, they have this PR that I honestly disagree with, even in the current climate, I don't see it. I can only think, they wanted to ban him before he left office in order to set a precedent that they could ban him before he left office, and use that for some sort of future legal justification. I could see this as a use to ban future presidents before the 4 years are over. Or if he became president again they wouldn't have to re-instate his account.
- justaguy88 6y agoEvery time I walk past the twitter building I think about how the people in that building enabled this guy
- freeopinion 6y agoThis might be an extremely unpopular thing to say, and should be obvious to the Secret Service, but obvious security threats have recently been less obvious to security officials, so here it is: Please triple or quadruple the detail that protects Trump. Put him in a safe bunker if you have to. Please, please, please don't let anything happen to him right now. Please do what it takes to let things cool off. We've got to get the temperature a safe distance from critical.
- trickbird 6y ago"The real power is who controls the state of emergency". It is NOT the "most powerful man on earth" (aka POTUS of the US&A). Read as often as required. Disclaimer: I am not supporting Trump.
- sjg007 6y agoMore seriously, why can't we get Trump in front of a doctor who can involuntarily commit him.
- bigmattystyles 6y agoGood. I've always tried to maintain a nuanced view of Twitter (and other socials) for keeping his account up. He's POTUS after-all. People saying Twitter should just shut him down because he incites, are, in my view, correct. Mentally however, I could never quite square the argument; I kept returning to `he's POTUS`. Social networks deserve much criticism, but those only criticizing social networks overlook the fact that there is a legislative body that has always been empowered to remove him, whose duty in fact is to be a check on him. The primary blame for him retaining his power must primarily lay at their feet, specifically those of the President's party. They thought they could ride the bull but they have finally been thrown off of it. Now they are seeking to distance themselves from the bull. I am sorry, but they should not be able to. Had they been forthright with their supporters and stuck to their views of Trump before he was president, we might have avoided all of this. In a better world, Congress would have acted and those who were trying to cynically benefit from Trump should have had the fortitude to call him out immediately and removed him. I don't disagree that Twitter should have acted sooner. As others have pointed out, their timing is much too late. They acted after Trump has been legislatively defanged. Still, Trump is dangerous, we're just fortunate he's an incompetent buffoon who is disinterest in the actual minutiae of the job. He should resign immediately. He won't. He should be removed by his cabinet or Congress as soon as possible.
- umvi 6y ago> After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service. Wow, if that's not an example of arbitrary use of ToS, I don't know what is. In no way were the two tweets listed "glorification of violence". I don't like DJT and didn't vote for him, but... what a farce, what a travesty.
- dapatriot 6y agoIf this is what has drawn Twitter over the edge, it clearly shows their dedication to establishment politics. All this comes after a message from DJT that tells people to stop the violence and go home?
- sn_master 6y agoI disagree with Twitter's decision. I can't give any more comments without risking getting banned myself from HackerNews.
- swatson741 6y agoThis action makes twitter seem a lot more significant than it probably is.
- Acrobatic_Road 6y agoAre they going to ban Arthur Chu? https://cdn.cnsnews.com/styles/article_big/s3/2021-01/Arthur%20Chu_1.jpg https://cdn.cnsnews.com/styles/article_big/s3/2021-01/Arthur...
- sprw121 6y agoI'm not a Trump apologist, but I've spent time around his based. The second and third order effects of this are going to be terrible. You have a large portion of the country that feels disenfranchised, unheard, and forgotten (the rural American working class). This is why Trump got elected, and why the Capitol was stormed. These people had some hope and felt heard through Trump. Removing him, along with the purge of many other conservatives (they've even banned an account I followed which posted documents on the Flynn case and provide some legal analysis) will serve to worsen this. I heard the phrase "violence is the language of the unheard" to justify the unrest and rioting this summer; I agree with this statement, and why I fear for the worst.
- metabagel 6y agoThey've been heard, but it doesn't matter. The people they've chosen to follow keep stoking their feelings of grievance.
- Karupan 6y agoI'm sure most people here know this, but https://www.thetrumparchive.com https://www.thetrumparchive.com is where all his (past) tweets are at.
- dapatriot23 6y agoIf this is what has drawn Twitter over the edge, it clearly shows their dedication to establishment politics. All this comes after a message from DJT that tells people to stop the violence and go home?
- ookblah 6y agohonestly, good riddance. you can argue the merits of all this stuff "intellectually" about free speech and what not, but it doesn't pass the sniff test. and twitter is a private enterprise. he's free to go off to parler or whatever and take the millions of followers with him. this entire thing is just an extension of the type of shit you get real tired of in daily life. like some bully repeatedly antagonizing you and when you finally fight back they claim persecution. like the key and peele skit... no, you're no persecuted, you're just an asshole.
- busymom0 6y agoDon't like it? Build your own Twitter. Don't like it? Build your own Payment Processor. Don't like it? Build your own Aeroplane. Don't like it? Build your own uh.........government?
- matz1 6y agoThis is how it works since forever, either build your own or take over control to force it to change.
- rufus_foreman 6y ago> Don't like it? Build your own uh.........government? It's been done before. I think the IPO was in 1776.
- drannex 6y agoGood riddance.
- BlueTemplar 6y agoSigh, now that idiot-in-chief has been banned, who am I going to use as a proof that Twitter is a garbage fire and anything said there should be treated with contempt? (Rhetorical question, please don't answer.)
- cblconfederate 6y agoThis is good for the fediverse
- jlkuester7 6y agoRegardless of how timely (way too late???) this moderation decision is, I cannot help but feel like the social media giants have decided that they have milked this cash-cow dry and now they want to make a show of "discretion" and "responsibility" to appease the incoming powers-that-be.... Ultimately I remain convinced that the only sane way forwards is via decentralized services like https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/.
- kiawe_fire 6y agoOne side began returning home almost immediately after the situation escalated, and has since been so widely shocked by the violence that occurred that many continue to be sceptical it was even born of their movement. The other side, through most of the year, not only didn't denounce the violence, but celebrated it as democracy in action, including one TV anchor that asked to be shown "where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful." One political faction is being torn to rubble over violence it likely never intended (and from which no positive outcome would have been possible), which effectively allows the other side to enshrine violence with clear and obvious benefits to them.
- bigmattystyles 6y agoYour equivocation of the two sides is such BS and just desperate whataboutism. Was there violence and destruction at rallies over the summer that was criminal? Yes and it wasn’t ok. I expect prosecutions, convictions and restitution. But on Tuesday what occurred was a violent takeover of the legislative branch of government by a mob incited by the defeated leader of another branch to prevent the official recognition of his opponents win. Give me a fucking break.
- kiawe_fire 6y agoI'm not equivocating the two, although re-reading my post I can see I left that impression. The violence in each case is disturbing to me, in different ways and for different reasons. I'm merely trying to sort out why the response to, and consequences of, the violence of one side seems so disproportionate to that of the other side, seeing as we both seem to agree violence is harmful to a civil society. So far, the only answer I can discern essentially comes down to "because I agree with my side more than yours", in which case, the side with the bigger mob will always win, rather than an honest discussion of ideas. Even if you disagree, if you set aside your hostilities and assume I say this in good faith for just a moment, I don't think it's that great of a stretch to see why this would be confusing.
- bigmattystyles 6y ago
- root_axis 6y agoTrump should make a blog.
- fdeage 6y agoFunny, there is « /2020 » in the blog link.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- vmurthy 6y agoThink about the second order effect of this one: Trump has lost a big megaphone using which he could have influenced 2024. He has had 4 years to clean up many of the things he has been doing but failed to do so. Kicking him off social media means at-least some of the fence-sitters won't be influenced anymore.
- hindsightbias 6y agoWhile your High School Civics class said a lot of things, the reality is (most of) The Founders got together because they saw where things were headed and they were terrified of mob violence that was breaking out in the colonies. They worried that either the Brits would arrive a crush things, or the locals would turn on them with tar and feather. So they got together and engineered a very weak democracy, unsure which direction it would go in. They left a lot of messy bits unresolved. Twitter is a platform without an editor or oversight. It is a platform for mobs. Our Founders would have been terrified of it.
- greedo 6y agoYour "reality" of early American history is nonsense.
- ggm 6y agoYour rebuttal is neither informative nor helpful.
- gdhdhdhs 6y agoThis is actually the most accurate description of almost ALL revolutions, if not all. If you read history, you will see the leaders of revolutions are not ordinary people. They are always elites. Revolutions always been less powerful elites getting rid of more powerful elites. People are just pawns in their games.
- jrockway 6y agoTrump has caused real damage to our society and democracy through his social media accounts. It is about time. Having said that, these actions ring hollow to me. He could have been banned a long time ago; this week's events are a culmination of brainwashing the weak through social media that has gone on for over four years. All of these Republican senators and representatives falling over each other to denounce him this week had the opportunity to remove him from office in February (or at least call witnesses at his Senate trial). They chose to remain silent, hoping that the political capital they built by supporting a dictator wannabe could be used for their own personal agenda. This week, they realized that wasn't going to happen, so fled like rats from a sinking ship, praying that they should save their tarnished political career or at least emerge with a shred of dignity. The timing is incredibly depressing, and Twitter's action feels the same to me. I am an advocate for free speech and I hate to see mobs forming around people hoping to deplatform and "cancel" their enemies... but I learned this week that I have a lot to think about. It is sad to me that a veteran who served four tours of duty in the Air Force was shot dead in the United States Capitol, ending up in that unfortunate spot because of a constant barrage of misleading information from social media; literally egged on by the President of the United States. We all have a lot of soul searching to do. I wish we didn't let it escalate to this point just to get some engagement numbers up.
- scarmig 6y agoIt's interesting that Gab also banned him.
- krona 6y agoA very modern book burning.
- hourislate 6y agoTwitter along with Farcebook are making a gesture/paying homage to the the new Regime. Biden is their new King, they must please him to keep Section 230 away.... All theater for the masses....enjoy....
- urda 6y agoTwitter waited just long enough, to finish profiting off the last 4 years of rage from him, to finally do something. I have lost all faith in Twitter leadership and engineering to have allowed this to get to this point for pure greed reasons.
- ohiovr 6y agoWhat good does Twitter do for society? Is it pure entertainment? That's all news is for most people. There is little to no actionable intelligence in nearly all stories we read. I don't think we would let evil inc in the stock market. Isn't there rules about businesses whose main selling point is access to foreign demoralization forces? People's brains are scrambled. Every time I leave twitter I feel stupider for reading it.
- eplanit 6y agoHow many days until trump.tv (or some equivalent) launches, I wonder (in anticipation)?
- acoward113472 6y agoIs it me or is this starting to sound the Chinese Communist Party? These are the same tactics they did to HK protesters.
- schwax 6y agoBen Thompson has a nuanced piece on this: https://stratechery.com/2021/trump-and-twitter/ https://stratechery.com/2021/trump-and-twitter/
- rglover 6y agoThis wasn't just Trump's account. Many major conservative accounts are getting nuked. This was an incredibly poor decision and will lead to absolute chaos. Stay safe folks.
- oceanplexian 6y agoIMHO there are things that are much more scary than some trespassing into government buildings or a riot. The possibility that we might slide backwards from traditionally liberal ideas spawned from the enlightenment is utterly terrifying. And we are rapidly heading in that direction.
- bargl 6y agoI feel like after the twin towers were blown up. It was less than 100 individuals that were the impetuous for one of the worst pieces of legislation I know of. The Patriot Act. Which was voted on in a complete state of fear. Creating an extra judicial process for people who fit into a given category. I fear the reaction to this, which I'd argue is why Twitter needed a great press release to justify banning Trump (which they can and should do as a private corporation). EDIT: I feel like we're in a reactionary state of shock where lawmakers may try to push laws that sound good to people who are in shock and fear.
- thefucnjosh 6y agoLet's hope they don't.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago> I feel like we're in a reactionary state of shock where lawmakers may try to push laws that sound good to people who are in shock and fear. Yes, less than a year after trump allowed the patriot act to expire.
- idolaspecus 6y agoDISCLAIMER: I think Trump is essentially diabolical, do not support him nor his behavior, and have a visceral loathing for the man and his (lack of) ideas. This is a grossly opportunistic instance of moral signaling from Twitter. I believe this independent of whether or not I believe they should ban him. Trump's behavior hasn't changed, his tweets are not more inflammatory than they've been in the past, and his influence is trending towards zero. They banned him as a moral signal at a time when the backlash they'll experience is at a minimum. Twitter is a shit storm and has been for years. They know it, we know it, the public knows it, everybody knows it. If Twitter actually cared about not being a Platform For Evil, they would just turn off the fucking angry echo chamber push algorithms, take a massive hit in their stock price, and be about their business. The "social utility" would be the same and we wouldn't have to worry about conspiratorial asshats going viral and reaching 50 million souls. But instead they go on burning the public good to fuel their money-printing machine and then crucify the enemy to signal their virtue when the wealth well dries up.
- imgabe 6y agoWell, the US has been a corporate oligopoly for a long time now. I guess we might as well make it official.
- internet2000 6y agoGood riddance.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- atlacatl_sv 6y agoIncluded in Twitter’s statement, explaining why it banned Trump: “Plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021.” https://twitter.com/geoffrbennett/status/1347696690841739267?s=21 https://twitter.com/geoffrbennett/status/1347696690841739267...
- julianlam 6y agoAm I the only one who feels a shadowban would've been more effective? He can shout all he wants into his own personal echo chamber.
- gfodor 6y agoThis will be used to justify escalation.
- Tistel 6y agoI realize that trump is odious, but, what is next? Be inspired by China and filter wrongthink from the internet itself? What’s after that? Search for the wrong thing and the police kick down your door and disappear you? WTF is wrong with these tech clowns? Read a few history books.
- gthtjtkt 6y agoKamala Harris encouraged the extremely violent and destructive BLM riots that killed more than 25 people and caused over $2 billion in property damage, but that didn't seem to get anyone's attention. She even set up a bail fund for the terrorists who participated in those riots.
- danhak 6y agoSay what you will about the motivations and justification, but it's got to take some courage to make a policy decision that wipes 1.5 Billion off your market cap in an hour: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TWTR/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TWTR/
- gabereiser 6y agoVery opportunistic of Twitter to ban him now... after all that has been said. Politics aside, violations of said framework should be held accountable when it occurs, not in post review. No one has special treatment. At least they shouldn’t.
- blackrock 6y agoPoor guy. Zuck banned him from Facebook and Instagram. Jack banned him from Twitter too. What will happen to his cherished Freedom of Speech? Well, he and his followers can always sign up on TikTok.
- gadders 6y agoThank god we have unelected billionaires telling the proletariat what it is safe for them to read.
- jerzyt 6y agoThis sets a terrible precedent. If you believe in democracy, you should let the public choose what they want or don't want to hear. Now we have Jack Dorsey controlling the public discourse. If you don't trust the public, you really don't believe in democracy.
- osgovernment 6y agoThey already can. No one is forcing you to use Twitter. There are plenty of other platforms, or you can even... wait for it, this is such a radical idea... host your own website.
- FemmeAndroid 6y agoIs this also your opinion when it comes to recruitment and advertising of ISIS via social media?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- anonymouswacker 6y agoSo long, Twitter. You were okay until you started banning people for their beliefs.
- ffggvv 6y agoreminds me of 911 when they took an act they had always wanted to do (patriot act) and used the circumstances to crack down on individual freedoms. this will be the last time i use twitter
- azinman2 6y agoNot showing to previous tweets of this account is really bad for history.
- diedyesterday 6y agoIt is interesting to note that these media companies and their political patrons would do the exact opposite, had the challenge to legitimacy of elections and the ensuing protests risen in non-western country, like Iran: In the days after the 2009 elections in Iran, many raised the same kind of wide-spread fraud allegations against the Iranian regime. Twitter and Facebook acted as enablers of those protests (which were, of course, legitimate) which got them permanently censored in Iran. But now with an election legitimacy challenge in their home country, from a group considered as "fringe" by the dominant political and media establishment, they would not only NOT enable the protests, but they would act as the censors and suppressor of that protests. So if inciting "anarchy and riots" is bad here, why it is good elsewhere? And if supporting "right of the people to protest" against the whole system and its legitimacy is good elsewhere, why is it bad here???
- biscotti 6y agoAfter the official @twitter account carried the race baiting terrorist #BlackLivesMatter hashtag in their bio throughout the best part of 2020 their excuse on this rings hollow. I expect the platform to wither, alternatives to flourish and both Zuckerberg and Dorsey to require security wherever they roam from now on. If I was staff at Twitter today, I would resign.
- curlyQueue 6y agoThere is no argument for censorship, suspension or banning, based on our 1st amendment—- on any of the multiple platforms doing so. I came on here just to check what the “young intellectual tech” community thinks— I consider myself part of it. I’m a 20-something female who has been heavily involved in tech for my short career. Heads up: This isn’t animal farm, this is 1984! I never post on here and stopped reading awhile ago due to the one-minded propaganda I consistently find on the site these days (i was a lurker a longtime before i made this account) but I feel compelled to share my opinion because these times matter, and us young (and old) folks matter. Amen and a-women? Welcome to the best addition to New Speak. Please look that up if you don’t know what it is. Have you zoomed out on how Big (and Little) Techs subtle involvement here? And how they may be affecting how you’re thinking? I can personally say after having deleted social media for a year and combing through different sources (time consuming), I feel very differently now than I did four years, or eight years ago. “I don’t like Trump” and “not being a Trump supporter,” the badges of honor on Hacker News. But here’s my practical advice: be very careful who you’re choosing. Everything in life is a trade off— even who’s in the White House, who’s in office, who you’re casting your votes for. Another piece of advice: for some laughs, and practical news these days, check out AwakenwithJP and Brett Pella :-) hope your hackers but your thinking caps on and leave confirmation bias in 2020.
- 1MachineElf 6y agoFunny coincidence, I was enjoying JP's Ted Talk an hour before you posted this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79zra755WgA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79zra755WgA
- curlyQueue 6y agoI’ll have to give that a watch, didn’t realize he had a Ted talk! My favorites so far are “what its like living in California” and “instagrams new terms of service - not sketchy at all!” The Brett Pella on Californians moving back to California one is also hilarious (can you tell I live here lol born and raised)
- awak3ning 6y agoVery disturbing example of censorship and de-platforming. The rationale for permanent ban seems both reactionary and subjective. The scant analysis provided under the "Assessment" stretches the words and context of the tweet to imbue it with the most uncharitable meaning possible. This should be dismaying to non-political and political citizens alike, as well as supporters and non-supporters of this individual. I believe this because subduing your opposition with force (whether it be physical or social) is never an honorable way to triumph.
- danijelb 6y agoThat's not what censorship means. Actual censorship, which was seen in Eastern and Central Europe and some other places during communism meant that you're literally not allowed to say certain things. You'd be prosecuted by the government if someone reported you or the government found out in any way that you were spreading certain kind of "forbidden" ideas. It didn't matter where you said it, when you said it, to how many people you said it, and if you used your own platform to say it or someone else's. It was simply not allowed. What Americans call censorship is not that. Anyone who is banned from a particular platform still has freedom of speech. They can say whatever they want to whoever they want without the fear of government prosecution. If Twitter bans someone, it doesn't mean that the banned person can't speak somewhere else. Everyone has a right to moderate their private property which includes digital space. Although banned from Twitter and some other platforms, Trump didn't lose his freedom of speech. He can say whatever he wants. It's just that he will need an alternative way to reach a big audience because major companies specializing in providing big audiences don't want to provide him their services.
- awak3ning 6y agoThis seems like a fairly antiquated view that does not map well to the current era or actual definition of censorship (A cursory internet search will help to better inform you as to what censorship entails and what actions may reside within the purview of censorship). One does not have to prosecuted by the government in order to have their speech censored, access to a public forum revoked, or have their livelihood and career threatened. There are things you simply cannot say within our society due the fact that they are deemed subversive or improper. This arbitrary ability to ascribe these labels to speech and thereby limit its reach and punish those who speak it is the very abuse of power that is characterized as "censorship". A government is one institution that concentrates power that can be a censor, but in modern times there are alternative organizational structures that are both powerful and global that can perform the act of "censorship".
- waynesonfire 6y agoso what's trumps alternative communication platform?
- dbuder 6y agoTwitter pulling the string on the money sack and pretending like they care. Thanks for all the impressions orange one, good luck.
- buttholesurfer 6y ago"Hooray for our side" Nice, just wait till they ban someone we like. I'm not a fan
- dnprock 6y agoI can't justify and support these actions in the past few days. It's time for us to opt-out of these scuffles. There exists the middle. Resist the temptation to join either side.
- wang_li 6y agoA question to consider is that the courts found @realDonaldTrump was official government communication a couple of years ago. As such is it appropriate that a private company can shut it down?
- tatrajim 6y agoJust a quiet word from a free speech advocate who has lived in China and spoken extensively with victims of the Cultural Revolution. The overheated rhetoric here and the shrill denunciations of political rivals ring all too familiar. Ask your older Chinese friends and colleagues how they view the matter of political censorship. You may find their observations salient.
- pnw_hazor 6y agoSame for my family members that escaped Vietnam. They lived though the fall of South VN and the rise of Communist VN. They see and feel similarities now that scare and depress them.
- jpxw 6y agoParler, Trump’s logical next step after Twitter, has just been removed from the Play Store. There’s a level of co-ordination at play here that should be worrying to people who care about freedom of speech. And before some idiot tells me that the 1st Amendment doesn’t apply to private companies, I’m not making a legal point here, I’m making a moral one.
- 4ggr0 6y agoI'm a leftist european who despises Trump, still have to agree with you.
- imgabe 6y agoWho is going to get banned for the BLM protestor that shot and killed a Trump supporter?
- thefucnjosh 6y agoIs this a parody or do you actually have nouns like names that you can use?
- imgabe 6y agoIt happened in Portland over the summer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_of_Aaron_Danielson_and_Michael_Reinoehl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_of_Aaron_Danielson_an...
- tedunangst 6y agoI think it's safe to say that Reinoehl has been banned from Twitter.
- imgabe 6y agoBut what about the people who incited him? Clearly individuals are not responsible for their own actions. The responsibility lies with people who say things on social media.
- tedunangst 6y agoI'm not sure it follows from some people were incited to all individual actions are the result of incitement.
- imgabe 6y agoOn one side you have people telling one group that there is a vast systemic conspiracy to exclude them from economic opportunity and murder them with impunity. On the other side you have people telling another group that there is a vast systemic conspiracy to politically disenfranchise them and exclude them from the public sphere. Both groups predictably view this as an existential threat and resort to violence. One is excused and even praised.
- tw600040 6y agoNow I realize the importance of open standards and protocols. The beauty of email. I wish there was something like that for twitter
- steve76 6y agoWelcome to the club, Mr. President!!! If it wasn't for Fed bailouts, @jack would still be selling it at SXSW. No one believes this stuff. They only say this to scam hippie chicks and fight over bribes from international marxists. To the other side, a humorous show of restraint. The politicians and lobbyists look so smug, like the cat that ate the canary after a year of business lock downs, looting, arson, bribes, and stuffing harvested, unsigned, expired ballots. Then, like some zombie movie on Wednesday, the law of the jungle pulled the power rug right from under them. Bark at a barking dog, all you get is more barking. Just keep walking. Where? Psyche 16, instruments inside the sun, data from singularities. Bell's Theorem across the entire Earth with orbital matter waves. To machine with planets, every engineer's dream come true.
- sobellian 6y agoIt used to be fairly uncontroversial that internet forums could be heavily moderated. Many of the more valuable forums I frequented in my youth were often moderated to stay on topic and cut down on spam. I cannot imagine paying much attention 20 years ago if a random forum decided even to go further than Twitter has and simply ban all Republicans or all Democrats. Indeed there are many subreddits that go this far with little fanfare. What is the dividing line here between these sites and Twitter? Another question - what burden does a Twitter ban impose on free speech on the Internet? If Twitter bans me, I am free to move to another social media site like Parler or even make my own blog. If my views are despicable enough then some services may refuse to host me but I am unaware of anyone who has been totally bereft of a solution to put up a website. These alternatives fail to impress for one obvious reason. It's harder to get eyeballs on Joe's random Q blog than on Twitter or Facebook. Similarly I could self-publish a book - and people do - but I lack the expertise necessary to actually get anyone to read it. I personally see social media as a set of publishers rather than as a printing press, hence why I'm not too chagrined by this decision.
- x3iv130f 6y agoI agree completely. Expecting privately held companies to serve as free speech platforms is unrealistic. The 1st Ammendment is something the Government is held to, not private companies. We don't expect book publishers or book stores to sell every type of book there is. In the same way we shouldn't expect social media websites to allow every type of content on their platforms.
- bromuro 6y agoI also think the twitter ban won’t mute them: they can always move to a website - yet websites can be banned and censored too.
- phoinix 6y agoConsidering that censorship maybe helps with the reduction of the lies, it does currently a very poor job. 60minutes posted their totally fabricated video of Schiff, on Twitter and Youtube. It is well on air on both platforms, with hundreds of thousands of views, and their account is not suspended. This is clearly illegal, and Peter filed lawsuit for defamation against the company. However before a judgement of the law is done nothing is going on. How about waiting for the judges to look at the Trump situation and afterwards we will see? In case Twitter fact checkers work as judges, that's seriously dystopian. https://twitter.com/60mins/status/1317769169543131136 https://twitter.com/60mins/status/1317769169543131136 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euabgDdLToA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euabgDdLToA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S333his4q0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S333his4q0o
- 12xo 6y agoUntil universal Internet access exists and is free to use for every person (including devices, access and use). The Internet and its privately owed and operated entities operating within the jurisdiction of the USA, are not the public square.
- Bhilai 6y agoTrump is a billionaire and apparently a very successful businessman, I am sure he is free to start his own Twitter alternative and compete with it.
- wolco5 6y agoThis is interesting. The deplatforming of Trump by left leaning tech companies creates a new platform that threatens all other platforms. Is this the first deplatforming that will result in deplatforming of the original platform? As the right flocks else where the left has no one to fight with. The places becomes a real echo chamber with a large drop in usuage.
- sawjet 6y agoMeanwhile, twitter allows the sockpuppets of a president committing actual genocide (Xi Jinping) to pay freely. So brave! No justice no peace works both ways
- bitwize 6y agoRelevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/ Proof that you could literally be the President of the United States and society will still be justified in muzzling and deplatforming you if what you have to say is too dangerously inappropriate -- with or without the government's help.
- pyreal 6y agoWorld War 3 has started.
- crysin 6y agoThis thread right here is proof HN is no better than Reddit or any other social media forum people try to claim it is. The amount of rage and hatred being expressed here is just sad.
- TedShiller 6y agoIf the decision was based on logical rules they would have done it before. So it’s clearly political. Glad to know that the most influential social networks are not neutral at all despite saying so.
- willis936 6y agoHave you turned on the news this week? It wasn’t the same as what was on last week.
- iambateman 6y agoI’m not trying to give Twitter a pass for the years they spent doing little...but...they are just people. Just a crew of nerdy tech folks showing up to work trying to balance freedom and safety (and profit), without much direct precedent. If I was in their shoes, I’m not sure I would’ve been more effective. This situation will be studied for decades as an example of what to do and hopefully the folks running into this situation next time will be more equipped to respond well.
- pyuser583 6y agoSo are they going to apply to the same reasoning to government of Ethiopia, which apparently started a war not too long ago. Or the governments of Armenia and the other place (Turkmenistan?). The Chinese consulate was recently bragging on Twitter about how its their concentration camps are serving as feminist awareness centers for Uygar women. Selectively addressing evils isn’t doing good: it’s taking sides.
- nevi-me 6y agoTwitter is an American platform, and I doubt that they would expend resources to try quell misinformation and disinformation from third-world countries that have lower followership, little financial incentive and very low legal risk; relative to the US. I'm from South Africa, and decided to temporarily log out of Twitter, because as a platform, it's become the kind of place for hashtag spam, wild conspiracies that are often dangerous and go unmoderated. Twitter has no incentive to do anything, the only times a tweet gets censored is when there's momentum in reporting it, or by chance if it gets caught in some other way. The last numbers I heard were that there's <10 million active Twitter accounts. Compare that to the US. The ultimate tragedy (for me) is how countries have ceded their digital lives/capabilities to American media companies. There's little reason for a South African messaging platform to not survive, given that the average South African only speaks to people in South Africa (those abroad could still use such service).
- OJFord 6y agoAs a result of the tweet deletions, actually the only thing I've seen/heard Trump say about it is 'stay peaceful', 'go home', etc . I only have secondary and tertiary sources for his inciting violence. Don't get me wrong, I'm not denying their veracity, I just think it's interesting. I think overall my opinion is 'it's up to Twitter what's on Twitter, whatever' - but also that personally I like its 'this claim is disputed' etc. banners, but I think the outright removals that destroy the record, break news articles, etc. are a shame. Couldn't the more egregious stuff just be more like HN's greyscale demotion and 'showdead'? '¡This tweet contains false information, appears designed to incite violence! <Show>'? Sort of like 'some viewers may find the following scenes distressing'.
- yawaworht1978 6y agoTrump had too much power, he either "made" people like that crazy to the bones q shaman guy or made them feel at home. Watch the interviews with him, he has read and believes ever conspiracy theory out there. The mindset of the fringe of these q anon people is what gives isis and all a pool too draw fanatic suicide bombers with a seemingly deactivated brain. Their leaders will drop them like hot potato's when it is opportunistic to do so. I did find some of his old tweets entertaining and funny but his role is not to be a comedian.
- busymom0 6y agoIt took two years to go from banning Alex Jones to banning of the President of the United States. Some slopes really are slippery. Everyone cheering for this censorship from billionaire elites while claiming to be part of resistance doesn't know what's coming for them.
- zmmmmm 6y agoI wonder how hard it was for them to restrain themselves from citing the debate around section 230 in this. Because the reality is, this is exactly what 230 would mandate - to a much greater extent and much earlier than it is currently done.
- mmmBacon 6y agoThis issue is way bigger than Trump. While many are likely rejoicing that Trump has been silenced, I think this decision is short-sighted and bad for everyone all around. Love him, hate him, Trump is the President of the United States and nobody on either side of the political aisle is going to forget that an unaccountable group of people silenced and censored the President of the United States. While this may seem like a victory in the short-term, I do not think the power structure in Washington is going to just going to move on after Trump is out.
- atlgator 6y agoNot a Trump supporter by any means but this makes me really uncomfortable. Cancel/Deplatform culture is escalating quickly. All is well and good until the tools of oppression turn on you.
- chasd00 6y agoi'm not surprised, Democrats are in power, you're going to see a purge throughout all the platforms since most align with the Left politically and now they have cover. It will be interesting to see if there's a "we welcome different views because our new inclusive culture" platform movement when the power swings back to Republican party.
- hestefisk 6y agoI think one has to consider this event not as an isolated decision based on two tweets, but a series of events that have escalated over time. Just like Twitter can decide to give everyone, even those whose opinions we don’t like, (as they are a private enterprise) a voice, they can also decide to cut short those that go too far. I welcome the decision, but I also tend to agree with those saying it’s “too little too late”.
- sebastianconcpt 6y agoCensorship is the seed of genocide. Change my mind.
- beirut_bootleg 6y agoI wish to remind everyone citing 1st Amendment that Jack Dorsey of the Twitter Party was not elected to Congress.
- umvi 6y agoYep, it's a great loophole to the 1A. Just move all public squares to the internet where voices can be censored with impunity by private corporations. Bonus points if your particular tech platform favors one political party. That way you technically aren't violating 1A, but the party you are buddies with get to benefit from the same net result.
- beirut_bootleg 6y agoIf that platform mentions in its TOS that "We hereby reserve the right to rescind your access to the platform if you talk shit about our corporate overlords or favorite political party", then I have no problem with it. This is not the case today.
- umvi 6y agoThe stated reason for banning Trump today was: he stated he wouldn't attend Biden's inauguration and that that was deemed "glorification of violence". How is that not completely arbitrary?
- v0id24 6y agothis in itself is a dangerous precedent for censorship at the request of the twitter management.
- busymom0 6y agoTrump says America first - BANNED Iran's Ayatollah says Death To America - allowed. Just shows where people's allegiance lies.
- dang 6y agoPlease stop taking HN threads further into flamewar. You've been doing this repeatedly. Yes, lots of others are doing it too—that doesn't make it ok, that makes it worse. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site to heart, we'd be grateful. The intended spirit is thoughtful, curious conversation. People can't do that and be in battle mode at the same time—the nervous system doesn't work that way. HN's rules apply to all political affiliations and all users, regardless of how right they are or feel they are, and regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are.
- codelord 6y ago"He's done worse before, why now?" is not a very strong argument IMO. Are we better off without him on twitter? IMO, yes. Then this is a positive move. I also think Twitter/Facebook should have clear guidelines for intolerable content that applies to everyone. Encouraging violence could be a good red line. Although, I have little confidence that any of the social media platforms would establish and equally enforce a standard policy. They usually take the path of least business risk which is understandable but not satisfying.
- dijereedan 6y agoY'know I'm worried this will have the opposite of the intended effect. That it will only embolden them further, so they come back stronger. Also feeds into those liberal stereotypes they endorse.
- o_p 6y agoInstead of banning him when they should, they milked the cow as far as they could, now hes some days to be irrelevant so they can virtue signal for free. Twitter are not the good guys at all Social networks have more power than they can handle, I hope they suffer more regulations, the influence in politics is too much
- shripadk 6y agoGeorge Orwell was right. He just got the year wrong: 2021 instead of 1984.
- krick 6y agoI know it's a bad thread to raise the issue, because everyone is so focused on Trump. But forget about Trump for a minute. If I recall correctly, for years all these internet giants — Twitter, Google, FB, etc. — protected themselves from any legal action pretending they are not mass-media, because they don't do any censorship and serve just as a middleman between content providers and consumers. Now, we all know that this obviously wasn't true for at least a couple of years, but we also know that governments are slow and lazy, and it takes some time for them to adjust. So it wasn't that surprising that there was no real consequence. But over the last year all boundaries were so ridiculously, so mindbogglingly crossed, that I wonder if something has to change now. Or do they really have so much power now, that there's zero reasons to be careful of government?
- piyush_soni 6y agoI think every platform is banning Trump now when they know he's going to go in two weeks and a new president is coming. They wouldn't have done it had he been still in power (for extended time) and had done the exact same thing. I mean, they should have done it a lot sooner!
- bergwerf 6y agoUsually posts with this many upvotes stay on the HN front page much longer.
- 6510 6y agoI still use RSS. It doesn't matter how much effort twitter makes. The simple reality is that you cant have a middle man in one-to-many communication. Its just not possible for their agenda to align perfectly with yours - or anyones. You can use twitter if you can make your agenda fit theirs (which is a moving target) and twitter can have plenty of users by adapting their agenda to its users (which are a bazillion moving targets) - good luck with that! One would have to be rather ignorant, a person docile enough to realistically anticipate any and all future contexts doesn't exist. Twitter is trying really hard to make it work - but it cant! I remember people who build their organization on google wave, on google knol and on yahoo groups. I build a reasonably large community on yahoo 360 and we tried to move to WordPress. (you can laugh, it's okay) I've used up all of my ignorance. I like RSS the way I like email and bittorrent. You can down vote me but to shut me up would require a good few days in court. We could just do discussion in stead and I might learn something.
- quyleanh 6y agoAn absolutely terrifying precedent
- raldi 6y agoThis is an outrage, on par with if Fox News were to dictate which people were allowed to speak on its airwaves
- MarkMc 6y agoIn Australia for decades we've had laws that prevent one person from owning a majority of newspapers and TV stations in a city. It was supported by many left-wing people because it prevented Rupert Murdoch from dominating the media landscape. Now days such people defend the dominance of Twitter because it is using its power in a way that they agree with. Is that a double-standard?
- terio 6y agoMaybe he has twitted worse things before but the ban has to be evaluated in context. Which is worse, lighting a bonfire on a dessert dune or lighting a match on top of a powder keg?
- systematical 6y agoI was opposed to banning anyone anywhere, public or private, until Wednesday. He inspired a mob that threatened two Vice Presidents and the entire legislative branch. Guns and bombs were found at the capitol. People had zip ties, seemingly wanting to take hostages. This is yelling fire in a crowded theater, plus Twitter can do what they want on their platform. No sympathy here. We'll see what the repercussions of this are, but its not hard to understand the reasoning. Don't be tone deaf.
- diveanon 6y agoTwitter being a private company aside, DT has shown that he is willing to incite violence. Twitter has a responsibility to ban him unless it wants to be held accountable for what he does next. Twitter is already largely responsible for this mess in the first place, without their platform viralizing his message of hate he may never have become president.
- mleonhard 6y agoTwitter made a lot of money off Trump. This move is 6 months too late. We all pay the price for their greed.
- tomjakubowski 6y agoMay I suggest a simple remedy? The President can start a blog on whitehouse.gov and join the Fediverse [1]. [1]: https://fediverse.party/ https://fediverse.party/
- dapatriot23 6y agoTwitter is a farce. They ban him AFTER he posted a video on their platform CONDEMING the violence and telling people at the capital to go home?
- diveanon 6y agoDonald Trump is still president of the US. He can hold a press conference whenever he wants if he would like to speak to the public. All of this talk about free speech in regards to the twitter ban is nonsense. Nobody is limiting his ability to address the public (except for perhaps pence and his cabinet).
- richardw 6y agoPeople are going to be falling over themselves to get him a medium to write on. He could set one up himself and cash in. @RDT media empire here we come.
- e_commerce 6y agoThis is a brazen display of raw power. If you silence the constitutionally elected President, and no law was passed or trial held, you are now King. Kings in the United States are unacceptable. Escalating conflict is in our future.
- controlweather 6y agoHere is his censored tweets: https://youtu.be/VGgPfttoX5I https://youtu.be/VGgPfttoX5I
- max_entropy 6y agoThe medium is the message - this chaos is a consequence of the hyper-centralized communication platforms, which are hiding this by pointing the moral finger at their participants to blame and censor them.
- nindalf 6y agoThis thread has 1491 comments right now but the first page only shows 500. Click “more” at the bottom in case you’re not satisfied.
- elevenoh 6y agothis is a slippery slope. not wise imo.
- spicyramen 6y agoThere is something that yesterday happened and will go into history, US is not a democracy, is a country run by Banks and yesterday the second power came into place and without shame exposed their identify: Big Tech. In any other country with political instability the Stock Market would crash. Today another day of unprecedented earnings mainly in Tech. They have the power to censor the most powerful man on Earth, a person that was elected according to the US constitution and laws. We need legislation to break and moderate this companies
- gred 6y agoIt's time for real p2p social media. I'm off to tinker.
- threesmegiste 6y agoCensorship. Free speech. No american again should use these words for other countries.
- janvdberg 6y agoA suspension also means a deletion of the entire history and exactly that part is worrisome to me. The archive is gone. How are future generation going to believe that this man actually contradicted himself so, so, so many times? Edit: Ah nevermind: https://www.thetrumparchive.com/ https://www.thetrumparchive.com/
- DennisAleynikov 6y agooh how the mighty have fallen
- waihtis 6y agoIncredibly stupid to ban him at this point. The storming of the Capitol was a dangerous event, but could've been the apex event of the Trump supporters. The whole movement should've been let to slowly fizzle away - now they've been dealt yet another very public embarrassment and the tug of war will continue. This has all the chances of becoming a case file for naive interventionism.
- Bellamy 6y agoIf Twitter would be my company I would have banned him earlier.
- mikaeluman 6y agoWhile I think Trump is completely in the wrong; He did not tell people to commit their crimes. It is important to maintain a strict standard here. There are many people who speak of the dangers of fascism, but they are not responsible when antifa riot. There are many who speak of racism, but they (even organization leaders) are not responsible for when BLM protests turn into riots. What’s happening now is disturbing. Not only Trump but dozens of other accounts have been purged. Even the Parler app has been removed from the Android store. If it hasn’t been removed from Apple store I am guessing it will be. The end result is a continued world-view split not only in ideas but in platforms; software and soon hardware?
- akamaka 6y agoWhy do you think it is specifically relevant to say “He did not tell people to commit their crimes”? Do you imagine some “correct” process exists for this situation, where Trump would face a trial and conviction for inciting the riot, and then Twitter would be legally be forced to silence him? No such process exists, and never will, since it would violate the first amendment. Ultimately the decision of when to silence him is left to the judgement of the individuals who operate the platform.
- lta 6y ago> He did not tell them to commit their crime When you read the speech he gave and those of the following speakers, I'm not even sure we can say that. He told them to march down Pennsylvania avenue and the next speaker told them they had to fight. It seems to me the math is fairly easy
- peter_retief 6y agoI was just thinking how refreshing that HN was free of US politics, until I saw this. Oh well.
- rkagerer 6y agoOf all the things he's tweeted that skirted or crossed over their policy rules, these are the two that get him banned?
- rishabhd 6y agoToo little, too late.
- anotheryou 6y agoTech companies shouldn't be the ones policing. The good thing I see though is, that he can't "enrich" himself from the followers gained as a president.
- totalZero 6y agoTwitter waited until Friday after 4pm because they know this is horrible for their share price. Trump is their platform's biggest kahuna.
- w0de0 6y agoIt’s a free country, and that includes the freedom of private business not to do business with anyone they choose for almost any reason. That’s fine with me, and if the Trumpists and their apologists had any consistency, it would be with them too. There are constraints on commercial discrimination around race and identity. They were painfully negotiated during the civil rights era. Ironically that form of discrimination by a business - separate but equal etc - is probably just fine with the Trumpists.
- Wolverines 6y agoDonald Trump should never have been blocked from Twitter. Where is free speech? Wake up people!
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Donald Trump should never have been blocked from Twitter Maybe, maybe not. Twitter is free to do what you think they should not. > Where is free speech? It's what Twitter exercises when it decides what content and content sources to relay. Free speech isn't an entitlement to someone else's resources to amplify your speech.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Wolverines 6y ago> Maybe, maybe not. Twitter is free to do what you think they should not. Donald Trump is free to do what you think they should not. > It's what Twitter exercises when it decides what content and content sources to relay. And now Twitter is doomed to fail. > Free speech isn't an entitlement to someone else's resources to amplify your speech. "Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The term "freedom of expression" is sometimes used synonymously but includes any act of seeking, receiving, and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
- tomerbd 6y agoNet Notrality
- prirun 6y agoI read both of these tweets just now. I have never read his Twitter posts before, and am not a Trump supporter (or a Democrat supporter; all politicians IMO are liars), but I don't understand how Twitter claims that the text of either of these tweets incites violence.
- peter_d_sherman 6y agoThis HN article, the Twitter blog page that it points to, all of these comments, and all linked related URLs and news stories surrounding this -- NEED TO BE PRESERVED FOR FUTURE HISTORIANS I repeat... All of this: NEEDS TO BE PRESERVED FOR FUTURE HISTORIANS In other words, don't let the fake news (or whomever else) horseshit you about what happened at this point of time in earth's history 5, 10, or 20+ years from now, when all of this information "conveniently" goes missing... THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT POINT IN TIME IN EARTH'S HISTORY I don't care what side of the debate you are on; all I ask is that if you care, if you truly care, then capture and store as much information as you can about this event as you can, from your side, from the other side, from all sides... IT IS AN IMPORTANT POINT IN TIME IN EARTH'S HISTORY. Don't let this information, all of it, or any of it, go into future memory sinkholes... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_hole On behalf of myself and future historians, I (and they!) thank you! We now return you to your regular HN reading and commenting. <g>
- stevenalowe 6y agoTo quote the ACLU: the Ayatollah can tweet, but the U. S. President cannot. Good luck walking that fine line.
- Wolverines 6y ago@realDonaldTrump Archive - https://www.thetrumparchive.com/ https://www.thetrumparchive.com/